PRESS: Messenger Telegram triples Russian audience in 2016

MOSCOW, Feb 8 (PRIME) -- The Russian audience of instant messenger Telegram, launched by social network VKontakte’s founder Pavel Durov, tripled over a year to 6 million people as of the end of January, business daily Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing specialists of Combot, a service of Telegram’s group chat analysis.

An employee of a mobile operator said Combot’s data sound reliable according to the number of Telegram’s users in the operator’s network. A person from Telegram’s competitor also agreed with the mentioned statistics.

Combot’s General Director Fyodor Skuratov said the figure included monthly users of Telegram, or some 60% of all those who downloaded the application in the country and 6% of the world base of active users.

Most of Telegram’s active users, 35 million–40 million people, are in Iran, Skuratov said.

Vitaly Solonin, head of the wireless department at J’son & Partners Ñonsulting, said Telegram has become much more popular over the recent years, meanwhile it is “still a long way behind the big three messengers – WhatsApp, Viber and Skype – that confidently lead by the number of users.”

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