A WARPING $19B FOR WHATSAPP

Feb 20, 2014 Victor Okech Mobile, News, Technology, World 0

In my previous article, The Evolution of Mobile Apps where I show cased the power of mobile apps as compared to the native mobile phone applications, like the Contacts Manager, SMS and so on and so forth. The world is becoming smarter everyday, with more smart phones and their numbers growing every second. Apple the leading computer and mobile device manufacturer in the United States has a capitalization of $500B and all this business is in mobile device manufacture, the infamous iPhone, iPad and iPod. Android an open source project owned by Google boasts of a 1 billion devices running the mobile OS. On the Android website, they say that:

Android powers devices that are beautiful, functional and available in many shapes and sizes. Because they run Android, they work seamlessly with your favorite apps and Google products.

It is said that:

With great power, comes great responsibility

And sure for these device manufacturers comes a challenge, that only we developers can fill and we are sure doing a pretty job and our mobile applications are evolving at an amazing rate. If you look at the functionality provided by third party mobile applications, that is the applications we develop, they far much surpass the native applications that are available on mobile devices. Mobile device manufacturers need to pull their socks if they are in deed to catch up. It is their responsibility to their device users to ensure great user experience while using their devices.

Case in point, WhatsApp the best mobile messaging platform out there, its too good it has been acquired by Facebook for a warping $19B.

WhatsApp is a simple, fast and reliable mobile messaging service that is used by over 450 million people on every major mobile platform. More than 1 million people sign up for WhatsApp every day and it is on its way to connecting one billion people. More and more people rely on WhatsApp to communicate with all of their contacts every day.

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia and yes, those phones can all message each other! Because WhatsApp Messenger uses the same internet data plan that you use for email and web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your friends.

What does this mean for WhatsApp?

Well, the entire WhatsApp Team will be absorbed by Facebook. The over 450 million WhatsApp users will now become Facebook users. There has been a lot of speculation over this move and WhatsApp users are concerned about what will happen to their experience on WhatsApp. Will it remain the same, now that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook or will Facebook change this and have the mobile application work for them? This is a question that we will have time answer for us, but Mark Zuckerberg, explicitly mentioned that WhatsApp will operate independently of Facebook, Facebook will only provide support to the WhatsApp team.

In my opinion, Facebook will find a way of integrating the platform to correlate to Facebook’s messaging architecture. This then brings the question as to what will happen to Facebooks Messenger? Mark is a smart one and the entire Facebook Team was strategic in this acquisition and I presume that 450 million WhatsApp users and the apps popularity are actually what made this deal happen. Statistics show that a concerning number of US teens were quitting Facebook to socialize on mobile messaging applications like WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, SnapChat and as such WhatsApp acquisition is a big win for Facebook. An amazing strategy to win back the numbers it is loosing to these powerful mobile applications.

You can choose to agree with me or disagree, let me know what you think by posting a comment below.