81–90 of 239 posts
Let's not forget Symbian and Blackberry either. WhatsApp also runs on those. I don't think starting a new Blackberry, Symbian or J2ME project today is really a good idea, though. It takes at least a few years for a company to make an exit, and by the time you do, those burning platforms will have flamed out.
It absolutely makes sense to work on a J2ME app today if you have a product aimed at developing nations. They won't be swimming in smartphones any time soon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
WhatsApp is also really strong here in Germany and other parts of Europe. More of my friends are on WhatsApp than Facebook (only very few more though).
I live in Germany and must be a very poor soul as I only know one person with WhatsApp and dozens with Viber.
Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat? It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total…
That makes them even more valuable. Why should Facebook buy users they already have?
This. This is the answer I have always looked for. > "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?" I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno, everyone uses it and told me to get it." I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible (just G…
It dominates because SMS rates were too expensive here. Even when Mom & Dad would buy you an iPhone, kids were choosing Blackberries (!) as their primary phone because of internet messaging.
WhatsApp was seen as something worked with non BB devices (iPhones, Androids). It pretty much murdered the cell phone providers who were giving away cheap data rates and betting on income from increased SMS usages. Whoops.
When iMessage and Hangouts came along it was really too late. The process flow for most users who want to send a text is: go to WhatsApp first, if the user isn't there or doesn't respond, send an SMS and be frustrated with them.
Anyone could have beat WhatsApp in NL, but didn't. If the telcos would have given out unlimited SMS messages, it probably wouldn't exist. If BlackBerry would have released iOS/Andriod versions, they probably would have been the standard in Holland. If Apple would have released iMessage earlier, instead of (presumably) not wanting to piss off the carriers, it would have stood a chance. ... certainly if they also released apps for other platforms.
OK, how is Whatsapp different to using SMS to communicate with friends? What am I missing?
It's cheaper (free). All this value stems from carriers's infinite greediness in making us pay (international) SMS and MMS.
We're now trying to catch up on the world with our data plans on 3G and 4G networks, but even then it's about $50 NZD for 1gb data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya.. that is definitely the takeaway. If you address all platforms, your market is suddenly both under served and absolutely huge.
One such "platform" is made up of the 80% of android phones that are cheap and basic with small data plans and limited access to slow wifi. The anecdotes from the 80s & 90s when annual PC sales for any given year were a substantial portion of the overall PCs in use at the time are interesting. The realization that software could be written for the newest machine and it would run everywhere soon enough is not directly…
This. This is the answer I have always looked for. > "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?" I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno, everyone uses it and told me to get it." I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible (just G…
Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, etc. WhatsApp dominates all of these markets.
I think a reason for this is that in Europe, we're not used to unlimited text plans. Unlike the US, we don't have to pay to receive text messages, only to send them, so there is little incentive to get an "unlimited plan" anyways. But ultimately, you still end up paying 20 cents or so for a text message, whereas with WhatsApp you pay at max 1 buck per year.
Secondly, for a long time, WhatsApp's user experience was simply much better than what Facebook had to offer with their Facebook messenger app. There simply was no alternative to WhatsApp for quite some time.
I actually resisted hopping on the WhatsApp train for a long time, but when virtually everyone of your friends uses it, you will join up sooner or later.