Facebook Messenger Inches Ahead Of Whatsapp Among Android Drivers

Topic Tag | Engineering

Data Report: Facebook Messenger Inches Ahead Of Whatsapp Among Android Drivers

Drivers who need to stay connected require safe options for sending and receiving messages while on the road. With talk-to-text and a simplified interface, over a quarter of a million drivers took advantage of Drivemode’s safe messaging features in 2017. Through our integrations, drivers were able to send and receive messages through a variety of their favorite communications apps.

Drivemode looked at anonymized driver behavior of Android users to understand what our drivers preferred for messaging. "Staying connected on the road is crucial for many drivers and how they choose to send and receive messages helps teach us how they prioritize communications on the road,” said Yo Koga, co-founder and CEO of Drivemode. “Messaging, as an inherently two-way system of sending and receiving, also reveals larger communication trends throughout the nation.”

Drivemode analyzed more than 4.3 million user sessions when a messaging app was launched, among over 266K unique users. The data was collected from January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017, across 50 states plus Washington, D.C. The rankings below show the percentage of user sessions that each messaging app was used by U.S. Android drivers in 2017. Not included in this analysis are image-based messaging applications such as Snapchat.


National Rankings of Messaging Apps

  1. SMS: 49.8% (2.1M Sessions)
  2. Facebook: 20.7% (906K sessions)
  3. Whatsapp: 19.4% (851K sessions)
  4. Textra: 2.5% (111K sessions)
  5. Others: 7.4% (325K sessions which earn under 0.1% each including Samsung Messages, Google Hangouts, and Slack)

Nationally, SMS was the first most popular method of messaging in every state and earned 49.8% of all messaging sessions, with various messaging apps claiming the other half. State-by-State, SMS was least popular in New York and Florida, falling under 40%, while Rhode Island and Alaska most preferred SMS, coming in just above 68%.

Though the number of sessions were relatively close between WhatsApp and Facebook, WhatsApp earned the #2 spot in only 10 states plus Washington, D.C. while Facebook Messenger was preferred in the remaining 40 states. Textra pulled into the #3 spot in Hawaii and Utah, and ranked #4 in 32 states.

WhatsApp was preferred among the larger populations of the Northeast, ranking #1 in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Additionally, WhatsApp had a 10-13 point differential above Facebook in New York, New Jersey, and Florida, showing impactful penetration in those states. Conversely, in West Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota Facebook had a 30-35 point differential above Whatsapp. In fact, 12 out of 16 Southern States and the entire West preferred Facebook. California, however, was notably close with only a 0.21 point differential between Facebook and WhatsApp. See the top rankings in the table below with the percentage of time those apps are used among messaging sessions.


State Region #1 App % of Sessions #2 App % of Sessions #3 App % of Sessions
Alabama South SMS 57.04% Facebook 31.06% Whatsapp 4.77%
Alaska West SMS 68.10% Facebook 23.00% Whatsapp 6.37%
Arizona West SMS 55.60% Facebook 22.57% Whatsapp 12.89%
Arkansas South SMS 63.90% Facebook 23.16% Whatsapp 6.07%
California West SMS 51.35% Facebook 18.84% Whatsapp 18.63%
Colorado West SMS 60.16% Facebook 20.32% Whatsapp 9.33%
Connecticut Northeast SMS 65.17% Facebook 14.22% Whatsapp 9.82%
Delaware South SMS 64.88% Facebook 18.50% Whatsapp 7.32%
D.C. South SMS 47.31% Whatsapp 25.42% Facebook 17.33%
Florida South SMS 37.79% Whatsapp 33.13% Facebook 21.15%
Georgia South SMS 49.32% Whatsapp 21.05% Facebook 18.95%
Hawaii West SMS 46.41% Facebook 20.05% Textra 7.95%
Idaho West SMS 53.37% Facebook 31.95% Whatsapp 6.16%
Illinois Midwest SMS 51.58% Facebook 22.31% Whatsapp 14.77%
Indiana Midwest SMS 43.48% Whatsapp 25.04% Facebook 22.24%
Iowa Midwest SMS 54.21% Facebook 28.27% Whatsapp 9.80%
Kansas Midwest SMS 54.60% Facebook 31.78% Whatsapp 4.48%
Kentucky South SMS 48.47% Facebook 38.54% Whatsapp 6.05%
Louisiana South SMS 54.32% Facebook 21.51% Whatsapp 12.53%
Maine Northeast SMS 65.17% Facebook 26.14% Whatsapp 2.30%
Maryland South SMS 44.78% Whatsapp 26.96% Facebook 19.72%
Massachusetts Northeast SMS 41.65% Whatsapp 26.79% Facebook 23.69%
Michigan Midwest SMS 58.85% Facebook 22.35% Whatsapp 9.09%
Minnesota Midwest SMS 53.30% Facebook 19.69% Whatsapp 16.38%
Mississippi South SMS 51.56% Facebook 34.86% Whatsapp 6.67%
Missouri Midwest SMS 59.84% Facebook 23.05% Whatsapp 5.53%
Montana West SMS 65.20% Facebook 27.13% Whatsapp 3.03%
Nebraska Midwest SMS 55.39% Facebook 32.41% Whatsapp 4.63%
Nevada West SMS 52.99% Facebook 21.64% Whatsapp 16.62%
New Hampshire Northeast SMS 51.30% Facebook 31.99% Whatsapp 5.33%
New Jersey Northeast SMS 52.35% Whatsapp 23.69% Facebook 12.96%
New Mexico West SMS 62.22% Facebook 24.28% Whatsapp 7.07%
New York Northeast SMS 39.66% Whatsapp 31.88% Facebook 19.26%
North Carolina South SMS 58.73% Facebook 21.88% Whatsapp 12.03%
North Dakota Midwest SMS 40.94% Whatsapp 29.26% Facebook 26.63%
Ohio Midwest SMS 66.05% Facebook 17.80% Whatsapp 5.98%
Oklahoma South SMS 59.38% Facebook 24.06% Whatsapp 7.24%
Oregon West SMS 62.60% Facebook 19.09% Slack 4.62%
Pennsylvania Northeast SMS 45.14% Whatsapp 25.98% Facebook 19.86%
Rhode Island Northeast SMS 68.59% Facebook 13.62% Whatsapp 8.85%
South Carolina South SMS 54.63% Facebook 30.51% Whatsapp 8.10%
South Dakota Midwest SMS 50.98% Facebook 39.55% Whatsapp 4.70%
Tennessee South SMS 56.86% Facebook 25.10% Whatsapp 10.32%
Texas South SMS 46.04% Whatsapp 23.75% Facebook 19.64%
Utah West SMS 59.87% Facebook 20.38% Textra 7.17%
Vermont Northeast SMS 64.10% Facebook 22.14% Whatsapp 10.37%
Virginia South SMS 56.37% Facebook 23.03% Whatsapp 11.17%
Washington West SMS 55.26% Facebook 23.91% Whatsapp 8.82%
West Virginia South SMS 53.24% Facebook 35.09% Whatsapp 5.00%
Wisconsin Midwest SMS 58.11% Facebook 25.69% Whatsapp 6.41%
Wyoming West SMS 55.95% Facebook 27.05% Whatsapp 9.63%