Despite the fact that it has recently lost some of its glory, Imo Messenger, the mobile app for voice and video calling and online instant messaging just joined the list of those elite mobile apps that have more than 500 million downloads and installs on the Google App Store by achieving this huge milestone itself. The reason behind IMO coming a bit late in the race is the heat it is taking from other apps that are more famous and popular like Telegram, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and many others that take the eyes of messaging apps away off of IMO. This misfortune of the app caused it to achieve its 500 million downloads milestone after a long waiting of six entire years on Google App Store.
For those out there who don’t know, and they are many since it is most likely that you have never heard of the app, Imo Messenger had a long and worthy journey of turning from being just a platform that enables users to access other instant messaging apps in its beginnings into a stand-alone messaging platform for messaging and online video and voice calls, a journey that was not known for its lack of obstacles.
Imo’s start was by former employees of Google back in the year 2010 when it merely acted as a service that provides its users with access to instant messaging apps like Google Talk, Skype, Facebook, MySpace, AIM and many other messaging apps and services by keeping the user accounts to all those apps gathered in one place. A few years later and in 2014 the hub-service switched itself into a full app that offers online text chat as well as voice and video calls. From that time and on, Imo, the messaging app now, fought really hard to keep up with its giant competitors like Skype revoking its access, Instagram, and others and face the challenges on its way towards expanding.
Although it may look like that the app was dropped off the map, an open data research agency for Android market called Android Rank says that according to its research Imo is having its best days especially in some European markets like Sweden and Russia for example as well as having quite a space in the Asian market. In addition to that, the agency’s research confirms the fact that the instant messaging and video calling app occupies the 2nd place in the category of communication apps in Bangladesh.
