Facebook’s mobile app Messenger now has 1.2bn users around the world – the same number of MAUs as WhatsApp.
And the social networking giant took big steps to push this number up last week – launching its Messenger Lite version for 132 new countries.
The “lightweight” app, which is designed for low-bandwidth areas, is now available in countries including Germany, Colombia, Italy, Vietnam, Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Japan, Taiwan and the Netherlands.
The move was announced in a post by David Marcus on Facebook, who said: “Making sure that everyone can have a great experience with Messenger irrespective of the age of their smartphone is very important to us.
“So if you have an older phone that doesn’t have a lot of memory, or has limited processing power, and you want the benefit of messaging quickly with any of the 1.2+ billion people using Messenger every month, give Lite a try!”
Skype was another company to launch a product for low connections areas this year, releasing Skype Lite in India in February.
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