The number of users of WeChat, known in Chinese as Weixin, in Latin America saw 1000 percent increase in the first quarter over the same period of last year, far exceeding the growth rate of Whatsapp, Wechat-like social software, which has been very popular worldwide, a survey shows. 

It also found Argentina, Brazil and Mexico witnessed fastest growing in the number of WeChat users. WeChat is a mobile text and voice messaging communication app developed by Tencent, an Internet service company in China.

This is according to the survey result released by Market research company "Global Networking Index".

The number of users in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico witnessed 835 percent, 1,108 percent and 2,502 percent year-on-year growth respectively at the first quarter.

Jason • Mander, director of market trends research of "Global Networking Index" said that in the past 12 months, thanks to the rapid growth in the number of users, WeChat has established its important position in the world social networking media. It predicted that at the beginning of 2015, there will be another 90 million users.

The survey attributed the following two reasons to the popularity of WeChat in Latin America: One is that the recent popularity of smart phones and the Internet; the other is a large number of Chinese enterprises invested in Latin America, which allows local people have the opportunities to contact with Chinese people and became familiar with and willing to use China’s social software

The article is edited and translated from《微信在拉美越来越红火》, source: People's Daily, author: Wang Hailin