After Telegram was slowed down in Russia, users began actively switching to other messengers, primarily Asian ones. In March, their audience grew by almost 60%, and overall in the first quarter, demand for alternative platforms increased by 50%, according to MTS AdTech data.
BiP, KakaoTalk, and WeChat are growing the fastest. The Turkish BiP gained 105% in a month and reached 1.68 million users. KakaoTalk grew by 82% to 436,000, and WeChat by 15% to 1.15 million.
The Russian fork of Telegram, Telega, stood out: its audience grew by 160% and approached 7.5 million. However, after being removed from the App Store, the service may lose up to 25–35% of its users.
Telegram itself hardly declined: minus 1.5% for the quarter and about 102 million users. But the audience's behavior is changing — the messenger is increasingly used for news, while calls and files are transferred to other applications.
Asian services attract with their simplicity, low traffic consumption, and built-in functions. In the case of WeChat, it is not just a messenger, but an entire ecosystem with payments, mini-applications, and a social network, although access to some functions is limited without a Chinese number.
The market is starting to shift: Telegram remains the leader, but users are increasingly dividing communication between different platforms.