Indonesia And India Become The Largest Signal Downloader Countries
JAKARTA - The Signal application has grown in popularity after WhatsApp's controversial policy. In addition, Signal users increased after Elon Musk suggested people to use this alternative application.
It is noted, in early 2021 the increase in popularity of WhatsApp got a quite sharp increase. Apart from Musk, Edward Snowden also suggested moving to Signal.
The number of downloads for the Signal app increased dramatically after Musk and Snowden posted a tweet on Twitter. According to reports, the number of Signal downloads increased to 2 million per day after previously only 20 thousand per day as reported by App Figures, Tuesday, January 26.
According to data records, the most new Signal application downloaders come from Indonesia and India. Previously, Signal was not popular in these two countries. Apart from Indonesia and India, there is South Africa which has a large number of downloads. The three countries accounted for about 40 percent of new downloads from a total of 10 million downloads at the start of the year.
According to the Business of Apps report, the Signal application was created via the merging method of RedPhone and TextSecure, which is the main Signal Foundation application designed for technology with open privacy.
Previously, in December 2019, Signal users only reached 500 thousand. Then it increased in July 2020 by reaping 3.5 million users. A very sharp increase occurred in December 2020 with 105 million users.
The number of downloads for the Signal application in December 2019 reached 10 million. In July 2020 it increased to 32 million. then in December 2020 to 105 million downloads. Signal only generates revenue from donations and does not take advantage of the application.
Signal's founder, Brian Acton, confirmed that his company would not follow the policies issued by WhatsApp as reported by Tech Crunch.
“I have no desire to do all the things WhatsApp does. What I want is to give people choices,” said Acton.