Almost a third of all Twitter users across the world are expected to be in Asia at the end of this year, as the messaging platform expands rapidly in the region. This is in spite of fierce competition from Asian chat apps and a ban on operating in China.

In its first regional breakdown of Twitter’s user figures, research company E-Marketer forecasts that Asia, which has surpassed the US in terms of numbers of users, will have more than double the number of accounts in North America by 2018.

India and Indonesia are both poised to overtake the UK to become the third and fourth largest Twitter populations this year. Twitter’s growing popularity in Asia could help reassure investors who have been fretting about slowing user growth, and who have sent Twitter’s share price down more than half so far this year.