Telegram touches 500 million mark on Google Play

Telegram touched 400 million mark on Google Play Store last month. Now, less than a month later it has registered over 500 million installs.

Telegram plans to launch video calling service later this year. (Live Mint)

Cloud-based instant messaging app Telegram has touched the 500 million mark on Google Play Store indicating that over 500 million people across the globe have downloaded the app on their Android smartphones so far.

The news comes as a courtesy of Android Police, which first noted the change. The publication in its report noted that while the Play Store milestones for a lot of apps are an indication of how many phones was the app bundled with, however, in case of Telegram it's a mark of how many people downloaded the app by choice since it doesn't come pre-installed on Android smartphones.

On the contrary, Google Messages recently touched the 1 billion mark. WhatsApp, on the other hand, is 5 billion installs strong on the Play Store. However, unlike these apps, Telegram solely relies on user downloads.

Separately, the app touched 400 millions installs on the Google Play Store last month. On the occasion, the company announced that it would roll out a video conferencing service later this year. "What's next, you might ask? The current global lockdown highlighted the need for a trusted video communication tool. Video calls in 2020 are much like messaging in 2013. There are apps that are either secure or usable, but not both. We'd like to fix that, and we will focus on bringing you secure group video calls in 2020," Telegram wrote in a post.

In addition to that, the messaging app has also launched a bunch of Covid-19 to tackle fake news and give out authentic information about the virus outbreak. This includes launching a special channel called 'Corona Info' that shows up as the top result for all coronavirus-related keywords in Search among others.