By the end of the year, 75% of smartphone owners worldwide will be using mobile messengers.

According to forecasts of the analytical company eMarketer , at the end of 2015, 1.4 billion people worldwide will use messengers on mobile devices. This is 31.6% more than a year earlier. It follows from the forecast that by the end of this year, approximately 75% of all smartphone users will communicate using instant messengers. And by 2018, their audience will increase to 2 billion people and make up 80% of all smartphone users.

The most popular messengers in the world are WhatsApp , Facebook Messenger , WeChat , Line and Snapchat . WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the main players in this market. They are popular in more than 20 countries of the world. WhatsApp audience exceeded 900 million users this September, Facebook Messenger 700 million.

The audience of mobile instant messengers is growing, as users are interested in sharing personal information. In addition, new opportunities such as peer-to-peer payments and e-commerce are constantly appearing in these applications. So, in November last year, Snapchat announced the Snapcash feature, which allowed users to transfer money to each other through a simple message within the service.
')
The most popular messengers are in Southeast Asia - 58% of users of such applications live in this region, Vedomosti reports , citing eMarketer. In Latin America, 68.1% of mobile device owners use instant messengers every month. eMarketer predicts that by the end of 2019, their share will increase to 77.4%.

Many application developers still focus on growing audiences. However, some projects actively monetize their audience, for example, the Chinese WeChat messenger. For 4 years, the Chinese messenger has become a kind of social network with its applications, dating service with nearby people and many other features.

Snapchat, mentioned above, has been trying to prove its financial attractiveness to investors for a long time. Initially, the messenger was completely free. Thus, the company did not extract any profit for itself. To reverse the current situation and attract investors, the Snapchat leadership introduced a number of paid functions for its messenger, began to sign advertising contracts, including with Coca-Cola and Samsung, Kommersant reports .

The most popular ways to monetize instant messengers are selling paid content (games, videos and emoji), advertising (official brand accounts, advertising inside correspondence), in-app purchases, ordering food, and financial services (P2P payments and subscriptions).