WhatsApp planning voice service in Q2 of this year
The smartphone messaging application, which was bought by Facebook last week, will be focusing on voice services for Android and iOS platforms
Now that the smartphone messenger application WhatsApp has been bought by the social network giant Facebook for billions of dollars, the company has announced their plans of moving into the voice service field at the MWC 2014 event. This addition of voice support will even out the footing with other apps that also support it like BBM and more.
At MWC 2014 today, the CEO of WhatsApp Jan Koum announced that the voice capability would be supported by the Android and iOS platforms at first and then the rest like BlackBerry and Nokia.
According to Koum, WhatsApp now has 465 million monthly active users and 330 million daily users, which is 15 million more since the Facebook acquisition from last week. The CEO expressed his excitement over this fact, saying that they couldn’t be more humbled by the growth. They are planning to branch out in even more countries, for example Korea.
Koum reiterated a key point for how WhatsApp will develop its strategy, which is the fact that they are using the least amount of bandwidth and they use “the hell out of it” by focusing on the simplicity. They will also be collaborating with wireless carrier e-plus, which will be the first cooperation between WhatsApp and a wireless carrier, and they will be offering special plans with access to the app.
He says that there are no planned changes and they will continue to do what they have set out to do, even after the acquisition closes, still no marketing.
If you haven’t already used the smartphone messenger application WhatsApp, which uses your 3G or WiFi to send and receive messages, pictures and audio notes to your friends and family, you can download it for Android from the Google Play Store HERE.
Source: TechCrunch
