A 120 percent rise in Truecaller downloads in a year shows South African cellphone users’ growing resistance to companies’ hard sales pitches.

The Truecaller app‚ which allows people to see who’s calling and filter out spam calls and SMS‚ has already more than 50 million users in Africa. The service revealed this week it is identifying more than half a billion calls on a monthly basis in the region‚ and 50 percent of all SMS’s that users receive is considered as spam.

The company also revealed that it has more than 3.2 million users in South Africa‚ where the user base has grown with over 120 percent over the past year.

The Truecaller app is blocking more than 12 million calls‚ and 21.5 million spam SMS’s on a monthly basis in South Africa.

“Over the past 12-months South Africa has excelled all countries in the region‚ becoming the fastest growing market for us in the continent. With the positive momentum of growth and recent acknowledgements‚ we are confident this is the right timing for us to expand our presence…‚” Ted Nelson‚ chief commercial officer at Truecaller‚ told a news briefing in Cape Town on Wednesday.

In a recent study conducted by Truecaller‚ South Africa‚ Nigeria‚ Kenya and Egypt rank among the top 20 countries in the world being plagued by unwanted spam calls.

The company said it will be setting up headquarters in the region and hire key personnel for its operations. During the event‚ it also launched its Developer Program with Truecaller SDK‚ its mobile identity product for digital start-ups and app developers. Truecaller SDK enables 3rd party app developers‚ digital businesses and startups to verify end users.

source: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/consumer-live/2017-11-09-annoying-phone-calls-see-south-africans-get-it-on-with-truecaller-app/