Mobile messaging application WhatsApp is the preferred instant messaging service among South Africans.

This is according to ‘The Mobility 2014 research study' compiled by research firm World Wide Worx with the backing of South Africa’s First National Bank (FNB).

The research report looked at the use of mobile devices, internet and money in the country.

The fieldwork research was conducted by Dashboard Marketing Intelligence in late 2013 and is made up of face-to-face interviews with 1,200 respondents – 800 from urban areas and 400 from rural areas.

Peter Searll, managing director at Dashboard, said the findings were contextualised according to aspects such as age, race, income and region (urban and rural).

And according to the research report, the uptake of WhatsApp in the southern African country has more than doubled its penetration in the past 18 months, from 26% to 53%. This is the equivalent to 10 million users of the application in the country.

The research report has also projected that a further 10% of cellphone users say they will use the service in the coming year.

Other findings in the report indicate that Facebook Chat is the second most popular chat tool with 45% of respondents using it, followed by Mxit, remaining steady at 25%, and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) rising from 17% to 21%.

Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of World Wide Worx, has said that WhatsApp has taken over the instant messaging market in the country.

“The rapidly growing penetration of smartphones and the increased ease of use of the internet on feature phones has changed the way South Africa communicates,” said Goldstuck in a press statement.

He added, “While SMS remains pervasive, new communication channels are being opened up to the mass market through both social media and instant messaging (IM) apps.”

Goldstuck explained that applications such as WhatsApp have to some extent benefitted from the increased advertising of WeChat.

He said as many consumers confuse the two applications with many users downloading WhatsApp instead.

He added that as WhatsApp competitor WeChat only has 5% of the user base in South Africa.

“WeChat is where a service like 2go was two years ago,” said Goldstuck.

He concluded that owners of WeChat, Naspers, could purchase 2go and combine the two messaging applications to increase user base in the country.