AW Poll: Signal has been identified as the favorite WhatsApp alternative

After the arrival of WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, Signal could count on a large group of new users. Last week’s AW Poll asked about the services you switched to, provided that was the case. This time you read the results: what is the favorite WhatsApp alternative among Androidworld readers.

WhatsApp alternatives

WhatsApp has developed in recent years – certainly in European markets – into a dominant player in the market of messaging apps. WhatsApp recently introduced a new privacy policy: the introduction led many WhatsApp users to suspicion about the way in which WhatsApp manages and processes data. Even in Europe, where the new conditions are not introduced due to obstacles in the GDPR legislation, WhatsApp could count on criticism.

Although WhatsApp has previously been criticized for sharing your phone number with Facebook, among other things, the criticism has never come from such a wide group of users. That the criticism has taken a negative turn for WhatsApp, became clear later when Telegram and Signal got busy with new users, who had usually just gotten off WhatsApp.

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At Telegram, this led to 2.2 million new users in two days. Signal later reported that the number of users on Android has increased fivefold to more than 50 million users. It is not known to what extent the same shift is visible for iOS and other platforms. In any case, it turned out not to be an easy task for Signal to accommodate users: Signal suffered from malfunctions for two days.

AW Poll: Favorite Alternative

Switching messengers remains difficult, many readers report in the comments. In many cases it will continue to be required to use WhatsApp, because a large part of your contacts continue to see WhatsApp as an important communication channel. Our AW Poll from last week also shows that there is a large group of readers who still enjoy using WhatsApp – 31 percent of the readers voted for this option.

At the same time, there is a large group of readers who have nevertheless installed an alternative: the Signal recommended by Elon Musk appears to be very popular, with 31 percent of the vote. What is striking is that the well-known chat service Telegram must recognize its lesser in Signal; 8 percent of the votes came in for this chat service. This may also have to do with the fact that many readers were already using Telegram.

Finally, there are the readers who have installed multiple apps, and there is a group of readers who say that they have been using “alternatives for longer”; these options received 13 and 11 percent of the submitted votes respectively in the recent AW Poll. Still, the question remains for how long readers will continue to use the app they installed as an alternative – if you don’t find contacts in the app, there are few reasons to stick around.