Google Allo having trouble competing with WhatsApp and Messenger in India

Google has high hopes for its Allo app, especially in India. The company has been marketing it a lot in the country, hoping to get as many users on board as possible.

It partnered up with All India Bakchod, a popular stand-up comedy group with over two million YouTube subscribers, to make a comedy sketch that advertised a few of Allo’s features. It also advertised its app in a popular coffee chain called Cafe Coffee Day.

Unfortunately, it looks like Google’s efforts hasn’t been producing the results that were expected. According to an app analytics firm Sensor Tower, Allo has been downloaded just 3.1 million times on Android and 264,000 times on iOS devices in India since its launch — September 2016.

These numbers aren’t high, especially if we compare them with rival services. In the same time frame, Facebook Messenger was downloaded 33 million times on Android and 1.7 million times on iOS devices, while WhatsApp was downloaded 58.6 million times from the Google Play Store and 3.2 million times from the App Store.

The data shows that Google Allo isn’t very popular among Indian users, at least not yet. As of now, WhatsApp is number one on the list of the most popular messaging apps in the country with over 200 million active users.

Nevertheless, we still expect that Google will keep trying to increase Allo’s market share in India as well as in other countries around the world. The company has already announced that it plans on bringing Allo to desktops, although we still don’t know when exactly will that happen.