WhatsApp to Add Voice Calling in Q2 2014

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum has announced at Mobile World Congress 2014 that the company will add voice calling to its popular messaging platform in Q2 2014, reports TechCrunch. The voice service will be added to iOS and Android first, with other platforms receiving the update at an unannounced future date.

We use the least amount of bandwidth and we use the hell out of it,” he said. “We will focus on simplicity.” Voice will come to Android and iOS first and then following on some Nokia and BlackBerry phones, he added.

Koum also announced the popular cross-platform messaging service has grown to 465 million monthly active users and 330 million daily users, an increase of 15 million from the statistics released last December. The company recently was acquired by Facebook in a deal worth up to $19 billion, including $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook stock and an additional $3 billion in employee restricted stock units.

Little will change for WhatsApp users following the Facebook acquisition. Koum assured users the service will remain autonomous and operate independently of Facebook. It also won't change its "no marketing, no ads" strategy and will continue to remain reasonably priced with a $0.99 annual fee after the first free year.

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Serelus

59 months ago

Gotta compete with Telegram, people rapidly deleting accounts at the speed facebook isn't liking. QUICK tell everyone we're adding call support.

Rating: 4 Votes

B4U

59 months ago

Doesn't matter. Already removed due to failbookphobia.

Rating: 2 Votes

LordQ

59 months ago

So Zuckerberg can hear me now as well? No, thanks. Already moved to Telegram (and iMessage with my friends with iPhone).

Rating: 1 Votes

Rushli0n

59 months ago

Will this mean that devices like iPod Touches will finally be allowed to use this app?

Rating: 1 Votes

wowotoe

59 months ago

WhatsApp is kind of outdated in Asia. Everyone is now using LINE or WeChat. Both have voice & video calling. And LINE is already 100x profitable than WhatsApp on selling emoticons.

Rating: 1 Votes

2457282

59 months ago

Koum also announced the popular cross-platform messaging service has grown to 465 million monthly active users and 330 million daily users, an increase of 15 million from the statistics released last December.

It also won't change its "no marketing, no ads" strategy and will continue to remain reasonably priced with a $0.99 annual fee after the first free year.

Article Link: WhatsApp to Add Voice Calling in Q2 2014 (//www.macrumors.com/2014/02/24/whatsapp-voice-calling/)

So, if I do a simple math, I get a potential $465 million income per year for Whatsapp. At that rate it will take 38 years to break even on the investment Facebook made. I can only guess that there is something else going on here that they are investing in. Maybe they will have an additional charge for the voice or something? But if they stay with no ads and only charge 99 cents per year, I do not see the $19,000,000,000.00 investment making any sense.

Rating: 1 Votes

Carl Sagan

59 months ago

Finally. Now release an iPad version!

Rating: 1 Votes

rohitp

59 months ago

This is what Facebook allegedly does...

This is what Facebook allegedly does... hope they crash and burn soon.

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/This-Man-s-600-000-Facebook-Ad-Disaster-Is-A-5258472.php#page-1

Naturally, Brar began disputing his bill with Facebook. He wanted his clicks audited by a third party, to see how many were genuine. Then he discovered that Facebook's terms of service forbid third-party verification of its clicks...

What?

Anyone agrees to that?

No audits? No third-party verification? No recourse?

You're kidding, right?

Sure, there will be discrepancies. Some people will click the ad and then close the browser before your site gets the request. That can happen, either due to some sort of network problem or simply because the user clicked by mistake.

But at this alleged level?

At one point, data from Facebook indicated his ads had delivered 606,000 clicks, but the site itself registered only 160,000 incoming clicks from Facebook, according to data supplied by Brar.

From: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=228793

Rating: 1 Votes

seamer

59 months ago

They bought the phone contacts that we try to hide from the official FB app. It will let their data scientists to create richer relationships between users that FB had not built yet, but may be otherwise very strong offline. The reason being if it's in your contact list you are probably friends are rely on that service a lot. (Dentist, etc). So I wouldn't be surprised if Yelp got bought out too to supplement the non-unique personal phone contacts we have.

Rating: 1 Votes