Whatsapp, the ubiquitous instant messaging service, has hit a new record – a whopping 27 billion messages processed in a day. They tweeted out this announcement by explaining the split between outbound and inbound messages over a period of 24 hours. By comparison, Apple’s iMessage service processes around 1 billion messages a day which is a far cry from Whatsapp’s numbers. Having used the innovative form of tying up the service with a phone number, Whatsapp skyrocketed to popularity especially in India as it was basically used as a free SMS service when SMS rates were high and notorious in public holidays.
With most of the growth in emerging markets, Whatsapp found its way onto cheaper non-smartphones such as the Nokia Asha devices, establishing a presence and even acting as an enabler for sales. Having decided to reside on as many devices as possible, Whatsapp has established superiority and used its first mover advantage really well. All these factors have enabled Whatsapp to jump from 18 billion messages just six months back to 27 billion now, which means that the growth rate is astounding for an internet service. Not many companies can quote this kind of a growth.
Having said that, Whatsapp has not established a business model yet and remains free on most platforms with exceptions to having a subscription model on some, and a paid app model on iOS. But then again, most of the times it ends up as a free app on a device, even bundled into handsets in some cases. Also, people are willing to pay a meagre amount as subscription for one year but we are not sure if that is going to be the business model going forward. Anyways, it’s a SMS replacement for the consumer and we hope it stays the same way and grow even more so that it gets as ubiquitous as SMS.
# TheNextWeb
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