Jeff LaPorte, co-founder and chief architect at EQO Communications, has come-up with an IM Map of the world using his company’s IM interconnect capability, showing each country seems to have a preference for a different IM network.
For instance, 77.18 percent of Argentineans love MSN, followed by 9.99 percent who love GTalk. Mexicans (83.72 percent), Brazilians (77.18 percent) Dutch (65.41 percent), French (68.01 percent), Italians (60.45 percent) the Turks (75.6 percent) are all big MSN users. In many parts of Asia, Yahoo is big.
In Germany, however, they heart ICQ, while in the United States AIM (35 percent) still rules with Yahoo (25 percent) and MSN (23.93 percent) getting the silver and the bronze. GTalk has just over 12 percent share in the United States — a surprisingly large number. Another surprising fact about the numbers is how marginal AIM is outside of the States.
My only quibble with this data: Why no Skype, which is a very popular IM client/service across the world? If I remember correctly, EQO started off by offering mobile access to Skype, but later changed its game after being ignored by Skype.
“Another surprising fact about the numbers is how marginal AIM is outside of the States.”
Actually, it’s not that surprising at all seeing as AIM’s popularity in the US can be tied to AOL which was, for the most part, a US only thing. If AOL hadn’t been so popular, I doubt AIM would be as popular as it is now.
Trust me, I’d love to leave AIM in the dust and just use GTalk, but there are a fair share of my friends who still are AIM only… and actually, a few who are Yahoo only, too.
-Adam
I agree with Adam, I don’t find it at all surprising. In Latin America and Europe personal experience has shown me that MSN is by far the chat leader – most people outside of the US have never even heard of AIM.
How many people really use Skype to chat? I would imagine that the number is growing, but I think people are still using Skype mainly to call as it’s not so widespread yet that people have their entire contact lists there as they do in other networks. Personally, I use MSN for Chilean and other non-US friends and am more and more leaving AIM in favor of GTalk with US friends.
There’s a whole range of new IM-like clients out there with a whole range of innovative features. Try out Bumpin, http://www.bumpin.com
GTalk and Jabber are one and the same protocol – xmpp