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Meta's Threads has reached a significant milestone by officially overtaking Elon Musk's X in daily active users on mobile devices
According to data from Similarweb, as of 7 January 2026, Threads recorded 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android, surpassing X's 125 million mobile users.
This shift caps months of steady growth for Meta's platform, with mobile engagement soaring by over 127% year-over-year, steadily narrowing the gap in the competitive US market.
Despite its success on mobile, Threads still lags significantly behind X in terms of web presence
While X maintains a robust desktop audience with approximately 145.4 million daily web visits, Threads sees only about 8.5 million.
This disparity suggests that while mobile users are increasingly adopting Threads as a daily habit, X remains the dominant platform for web-based browsing and professional "second-screen" use.
However, the overall trend indicates that X's mobile dominance is fading, with its US mobile audience reportedly halving over the past year.
Threads' rise is attributed to Meta's strategic ecosystem integration and a rapid rollout of user-requested features
By leveraging its massive existing user base through cross-promotion on Instagram and Facebook, Meta has lowered the barrier for entry.
The platform has also evolved into a feature-rich environment, introducing tools such as interest-based communities, direct messaging, long-form text, and even interactive games.
By focusing on a "friendlier" atmosphere for creators, Threads has successfully fostered a more consistent daily habit among mobile users.
While Threads' growth is viewed as a long-term trend, recent controversies surrounding X have further shifted the social media landscape
The discovery that X's integrated AI, Grok, was being used to create non-consensual deepfake images has triggered high-level legal investigations in California, the UK, the EU, and Malaysia.
Although these issues have driven a spike in installations for smaller rivals like Bluesky, Threads remains the most formidable alternative to X due to Meta's immense scale and its aggressive efforts to capture the text-based social media market.
