Clubhouse is coming to Android this week after recent drop in iOS installs

Screenshot of Clubhouse app

With 10 million weekly active iPhone users on board, audio based social media app Clubhouse is now headed for a worldwide release on Android this week, developers Alpha Corporation announced through an official Twitter post.

The app will start rolling out first to Android users in Japan, Brazil, and Russia on May 18 followed by a worldwide roll out on afternoon of May 21. Users in Nigeria and India will be able to download the app on the morning of May 21, the Twitter post stated.

Clubhouse was launched as an iOS only app in March 2020 by Silicon valley based entrepreneurs Rohan Seth and Paul Davidson. In April, the duo secured an undisclosed amount in series C funding, which boosted the social media company’s valuation by four times to $4 billion.

Work on the Android app was started early this year and a beta version for Android was released this month for users in the US.

Though the initial response to Clubhouse was tepid, interest in it grew after several influencers joined the platform. The app gained an even bigger traction in February after heads of two of the major global corporations, Tesla Inc’s CEO Elon Musk and Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, started using it to host meetings.

The app’s total downloads on Apple’s App Store soared from 3.5 million on February 1 to 8.1 million on February 16, according to App Annie, an app analytics firm, reported Tech Crunch.

However, after the surge seen in February and March, the app’s downloads on iOS once again plummeted to previous levels, as per App Magic, a mobile analytics firm. Experts have attributed this dip in new installs to roll out of a similar feature by more established social media networks.

While LinkedIn, Reddit and Discord have reportedly expressed plans to develop and incorporate a similar feature in their respective social media apps, Twitter has already rolled out an audio based service called Spaces within its primary social media app and has been expanding it to more users and geographies. Facebook too has announced a bevy of new audio tools.

Roll out of Clubhouse app on Android opens it to millions of new Android users, especially in countries such as India where Android OS has over 95% market share.

To create buzz prior to the official roll out on Android, the Clubhouse app has been listed on Google Play Store with the option to pre-register and auto install.

After the app is installed on the phone, users will need an invitation to set up an account. Once an account is created, users can create or join live chatrooms by others and drop in audio messages or listen to audio messages from others. Conversations in a chatroom is available only in real time and users cannot record or listen to it after the chatroom is closed.

However, the app reportedly can and does record audio temporarily for the purpose of supporting incident investigation. If a user reports safety violation, the audio recording is retained for investigation and then deleted.

According to a Tech Crunch report, regulators in Germany and France are looking into Clubhouse to understand how it protects the privacy of European users.