Version 7 of African mobile social networking application Mxit has quietly found its way onto the Google Android Play store, following official launches for Apple and Nokia devices last year.

Mxit made official announcements regarding the launch of its version 7 application for the likes of Apple and Nokia Asha devices late last year, as the social network moved to completely rebuild its instant messaging app experience.

In November 2013, Mxit said it planned to launch version 7 of its application for Android in a matter weeks while the company said a Windows Phone version has been planned to be unveiled in early 2014.

Subsequently though, Mxit 7 has become available on the Google Android Play store only in beta mode, meaning that the application is in a testing phase before a stable version is released.

Version 6 of the Mxit app, therefore, is listed as the main stable version on the Google application store.

But although Mxit 7 is in beta mode on the Google Android Play store, it has already notched up over 10,000 downloads and received over 600 reviews.

Mxit’s move to relaunch its application experience has come amid tough competition in the South African and African social networking space.

According to a research report by World Wide Worx and Fuseware called “A Social Media Landscape 2014”, rival African instant messaging service 2go has 10.5 million monthly active users.

Meanwhile, the research revealed that Mxit has 7.4 million monthly active users on the continent.

In addition, Facebook has overtaken Mxit in South Africa to become the country’s biggest social network, according to the research. Facebook has over 9 million users in the country, according to World Wide Worx and Fuseware.