Telegram has become the latest app to surpass 1 billion installs on the Google Play store. The sudden increase in downloads could be attributed to major outages at Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram earlier this month. Founded by Pavel Durov Telegram is slowly increasing its market presence and gained more users due to the outages at rivals in the space. All Facebook-owned apps were inaccessible for several hours due to configuration changes on October 4, pushing many users to switch to Telegram.

The Telegram app has now touched the 1-billion download mark on Google Play, the install counter shows. It was first spotted by Android Police. Earlier, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said that the app gained more than 70 million new users during the Facebook outage on October 4. “The daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day,” Durov wrote on his Telegram channel.

In August, Telegram crossed the milestone of one billion downloads globally, as per Sensor Tower data. Other apps on the list included WhatsApp as well as Messenger, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify, and Netflix. The Sensor Tower data also showed that India has emerged as the largest Internet market for Telegram, with around 22 percent of its lifetime installs. Russia and Indonesia were the two key markets for the app following India from where it received 10 percent and eight percent of its total installs, respectively. Telegram also surged by 214.7 million installs in the first half of 2021. This means a 61 percent year-on-year growth from the 133 million reported in the same period of 2020, said Sensor Tower.