Thais and other Southeast Asians love chatting with instant messaging apps. Therefore, the use of messenger apps for smartphones, tablets, and computers is common in these countries. If you are coming into any of these countries, you may be bothered about whether you can use WhatsApp or not.
Without a doubt, WhatsApp is available in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and Timor-Leste. With your mobile phone number, you can easily register on WhatsApp and start chatting with people from different countries around the globe. So, there is nothing to be afraid of if you want to chat with WhatsApp in Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations. As long as you have a stable internet connection, WhatsApp is available for use in these countries.
What Instant Messaging App Do Thais Prefer?
It is worthwhile to know that many Thais don’t use WhatsApp as its market share is relatively small in the Land of Smiles. In Thailand, the locals prefer exchanging instant messages with LINE, which is a popular Japanese instant messaging application. According to a digital data report, LINE is the most downloaded app in Thailand.
As reported by Hootsuite Analytics, more than 84% of the internet users in Thailand have at least one LINE account in 2019. The percentage is believed to have even increased further now. To be more factual, the only social media platforms that are more popular than LINE in Thailand are Facebook and YouTube. Hence, in the pecking order, LINE is ahead of WhatsApp in Thailand.
LINE can be used for interacting via texts, audio, video, images, etc. Also, the messaging app works perfectly on smartphones, tablets, and PCs; hence, most internet users in Thailand have it on their electronic devices.
You should, however, note that this is not the same for other countries in South East Asia. For instance, Facebook Messenger is the most commonly used instant messaging app in The Philippines and Vietnam whereas WhatsApp is more popular than other messaging apps in Indonesia and Singapore.
Apart from Thailand, LINE is also popular in Japan, Taiwan, and Indonesia and has more than 200 million daily active users. It is the second most commonly used instant messaging app in Asia.
Why Is LINE More Popular than WhatsApp in Thailand?
Considering the popularity of WhatsApp in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas, and other places, you may be wondering why LINE is preferred by Thais. Well, there is an array of reasons for this, and they include:
- LINE offers high-quality services
Comparatively, LINE offers exceptional services to its users. It comes with several amazing features that have continued to draw more users to it. It allows free top-notch voice and video calls. LINE also features “Snap Movie” which is for recording a stop-motion video that you can add background music to. So, it is not strange that most Thais prefer to use LINE instead of WhatsApp or another instant messaging app.
- LINE has lots of cute animated characters
The popularity of LINE in Thailand is heavily linked to its lovely animated stickers which are often used for expressing emotions. Lots of Thais love using these cute animated characters. Many of them don’t even hesitate to spend money to buy beautiful sticker albums and use them to communicate with others. Lots of young people even buy cute stickers to show them off to their friends and family.
In addition, some of the animated characters can be customized to add personal touches to your messages. All these factors ensure that LINE tops WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other instant messaging apps in Thailand.
- It is highly customizable
LINE works like Instagram as you can easily and quickly change your personal information. The app also allows users to add personal theme song to your messages to a friend. Similarly, you can create and add a theme song to your LINE profile. Consequently, LINE stands out among all the instant messaging apps available.
Another way through which LINE is highly customizable is the ease of changing your personal information. You can alter your information within a few seconds. This makes the app trendy among lots of young Thais.
- It allows a larger group call
If you want to make group calls on WhatsApp, the maximum number of participants is 8. Even some IM apps don’t allow you to make group calls at all. In this aspect, LINE beats most other IM apps hands down as it allows you to have a group call with as many as 200 different participants. Also, the group call management features of LINE are more improved than other apps.
While offering this feature, LINE also utilizes a strong ECDH protocol to encrypt the messages of its users.
- Thais love Japanese items
From Japanese food to anime, manga, Japanese music, Japanese clothes, etc., lots of Thais love anything that comes from Japan. Since LINE is from a Japanese company, Thais prefer it to other apps.
- It allows calls to non-users
On WhatsApp and most other IM apps, you can only call people that are using the same app as you do. But LINE is quite different as the app allows you to call people that don’t have LINE accounts. This is done through a feature called LINE Out. The call rates are great and available to users around the world.
When you consider the various features mentioned above, you will agree that LINE has some advantages over WhatsApp and other instant messaging apps. Therefore, it is only normal for Thais to prefer using it.
Conclusion
As explained earlier, WhatsApp is available in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. So, you should not get worked up over the possibility of using WhatsApp in any of these nations. Nevertheless, most Thais prefer chatting via LINE. So, if you want to communicate with Thais, you should consider downloading LINE and start using it for seamless communication while enjoying its several spectacular features.
