WhatsApp has been in the news quite a lot recently, obviously this can be chalked up to the fact that Facebook has agreed to pay $19 billion to acquire the world’s most popular cross platform messaging service. This rags to riches story will inspire many for years to come, but just because its being acquired doesn’t mean that WhatsApp will cease to exist. Facebook will continue to run it as it is, while the time preps up to add even more value to its service. Co-founder Jan Koum has revealed at a session during Mobile World Congress 2014 that WhatsApp voice calls are coming in the second quarter of 2014.
Already touting a user base of well over 400 million people around the globe, this move will place WhatsApp in direct competition with the likes of Skype, Viber, Line and even BBM, which only recently allowed users on other platforms to make voice calls. Existing WhatsApp users have to look towards other services when they want to make calls over IP, when the feature finally arrives in the their favorite cross platform messaging application, its hard to see why they’ll lean towards a competitor again. This could ultimately drive more growth for WhatsApp, particularly in emerging markets, and put even greater pressure on the likes of BBM, which is struggling hard to survive in this extremely competitive and saturated market.
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