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Survey names VK, WhatsApp and Viber as Russia’s most popular mobile messengers

VKontakte, a Russian social networking website, emerged as a leader from the fifth place it held in the company’s previous survey on the issue, dated mid-2015

© EPA/RITCHIE B. TONGO

MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. VK, WhatsApp and Viber have become Russia’s most popular mobile instant messaging services as of late 2016, according to a research by J'son & Partners Consulting.

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Kremlin says no decision on limiting messengers use for Russian officials

VKontakte, a Russian social networking website, emerged as a leader from the fifth place it held in the company’s previous survey on the issue, dated mid-2015. Skype, an absolute leader in 2013 and third in 2015, was ranked fourth in the latest survey.

The decline in Skype’s popularity in Russia in 2016 is confirmed by other studies and is attributed to relatively low quality of communication, abundance of advertising, complicated registration process as compared to other messenger services, as well as to the need to keep the app running in order to communicate in real-time, according to the survey.

Among the world’s most popular messenger services, according to the survey, are WhatsApp (about 1.2 billion users in late 2016), followed by Facebook Messenger (1 billion users in mid-2016). Other popular messengers are China’s QQ (about 900 million users as of third quarter of 2016) and WeChat (about 846 million users as of third quarter of 2016). Skype (over 300 million users in the reported period), Viber (260 million users) and Line (217 million in late 2016) were also named among the world’s most popular instant messaging applications.

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