One year on: Nearly half of Instagram users on Android

By Trevor Mogg April 4, 2013

Wow, has it already been a year since Instagram launched on Android? Apparently, yes, and according to the photo-sharing company, almost half of those using the service are doing so on Android devices.

In a post on the site’s blog on Tuesday, Instagram Android team member Philip McAllister thanked its Android users for making the community “amazing”.

“One year ago today we launched Instagram for Android,” McAllister wrote in the post. “In less than a day, over a million people downloaded the app, and now nearly half of all Instagrammers use the Android app to share photos with friends, family and the world.”

In February this year, the photo site, which launched on the iPhone in October 2010, reached 100 million users. That’s right, 100 million in two-and-a-half years. That kind of growth is pretty amazing, especially when you think that it took Facebook four years to reach the same figure, and Twitter five years. Of course, it wouldn’t have been possible without the app hitting Android handsets on April 3, 2012.

But remember the fuss made by a number of iOS users when it did? Some complained of low-quality photos taken on Android handsets appearing on Instagram, while others said that sub-par Android phones could potentially crash the site. For some observers, it smacked of elitism, though it’s possible much of the talk from iOS users was delivered with tongue firmly lodged in cheek.

Anyway, things soon settled down, people got on with snapping and uploading square retro-style photos, and before you could say, “I would’ve chosen a different filter for that shot,” Facebook bought the service for around a billion bucks.

Android users the world over are clearly loving the app, with McAllister highlighting a few users who’ve “contributed to the community in innovative and powerful ways, including @daveedgamboa’s incredible jumpstagrams around southern California, photos of England’s beautiful Lancashire county from @adamgrayson and even a glimpse into the life of Kenya’s nomads from @grantsmind.”

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