Recently after being Purchased by Facebook, WhatsApp will soon make its first change to its service by adding voice calls.
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress(MWC) earlier today, WhatsApp’s founder and chief executive Jan Koum revealed that voice calling will be added in the second quarter of 2014, meaning it could arrive as early as April. Firstly they started this feature in Android and iOS then Windows and Blackberry.
"We are driven by the mission that people should be able to stay in touch anywhere and affordably. Our goal is to be on every mobile phone in the world," Koum said on Monday, speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Koum also revealed that the service now has 465 million monthly active users and 330 million daily users, and while Facebook is about sharing, he stressed that WhatsApp wanted to know “as little as possible” about its users , like a user’s name. He said that the app will continue to focus on simplicity and there are no plans to change the app.
The Guardian reports that WhatsApp's voice calling features will be free, though it's possible that this may only be for a limited time. Messaging is initially free within the app, but eventually requires a $0.99 per year subscription. It's likely that voice services will fall under this too, while breaking it out as a second offering could even provide an additional revenue stream. Though WhatsApp has never appeared eager to bother users with added costs like that on the path to big profits, it'll be interesting to see if that changes as a public company underneath Facebook.
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| Jan Koum at MWC (24 Feb,2014) |
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress(MWC) earlier today, WhatsApp’s founder and chief executive Jan Koum revealed that voice calling will be added in the second quarter of 2014, meaning it could arrive as early as April. Firstly they started this feature in Android and iOS then Windows and Blackberry.
"We are driven by the mission that people should be able to stay in touch anywhere and affordably. Our goal is to be on every mobile phone in the world," Koum said on Monday, speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Koum also revealed that the service now has 465 million monthly active users and 330 million daily users, and while Facebook is about sharing, he stressed that WhatsApp wanted to know “as little as possible” about its users , like a user’s name. He said that the app will continue to focus on simplicity and there are no plans to change the app.
The Guardian reports that WhatsApp's voice calling features will be free, though it's possible that this may only be for a limited time. Messaging is initially free within the app, but eventually requires a $0.99 per year subscription. It's likely that voice services will fall under this too, while breaking it out as a second offering could even provide an additional revenue stream. Though WhatsApp has never appeared eager to bother users with added costs like that on the path to big profits, it'll be interesting to see if that changes as a public company underneath Facebook.
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