Last year Telegram, the messaging app that isn't Meta's and has been on our list of the most downloaded apps in the world every month rolled out a paid tier to its then-free app. A few companies, including Snapchat, have done that in 2022.
More than six months in, I was curious to see just how much money an app that was downloaded by more than a billion people since 2020 is earning.
Really, as much as I expected when it first launch...
Let's look at more absolute numbers.
Our estimates show Telegram earned a total of $7M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play between June and December of 2022. That's what Telegram gets to keep after giving Apple and Google their share.
If you compare Telegram's revenue to Twitter's, which struggled to get beyond what Telegram managed to earn by its third month until Elon came along, this revenue is very healthy.
But if you compare those to Snapchat's, another app that rolled out a paid tier in 2022, Telegram's total is just a tad higher than Snap's first month.
To me that spells opportunity!
I think Telegram's offering will need to evolve in order to capture that opportunity, however. Although revenue is increasing, the rate of growth and even absolute growth isn't.
Revenue growth has slowed down from 67% in August, month three, to just 12% in December. I purposely skipped the earlier growth numbers which are higher because most apps have big launches and then decline.
Selling small features, while nice, just can't garner the kind of growth I'd expect to see from Telegram's users. It might work on Snap's younger audience, but Telegram would really need to roll out something useful to see meaningful growth.
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