Mobile World Congress 2014 is going on in full force. Earlier today at MWC 2014, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum mentioned the service will get a new exciting feature in the coming months: voice communication. Well, it’s not exactly known if it will be something similar to Skype/BBM calls or will it be implemented in some other way.
This should come as a good news for all the users of the instant messaging service, which was recently purchased by the social networking giant Facebook for an astonishing $19 billion. This move should drop a bomb shell on services such as KakaoTalk, Line, BBM, and other messaging apps who offer voice services. The service will roll out for iOS and Android by Q2 followed by some Nokia phones and Blackberry — something which happens quite often. There’s no word if it includes the entire Nokia line up or selected ones, or Windows Phone in general. Perhaps Skype will have some new competition.
In addition, Koum also gave a preview of the gigantic user base of the instant messaging service. He mentioned WhatsApp has almost 465 million users, with 330 million active daily users. The number increased by a whopping 15 million since last week when the news about the Facebook acquisition broke, so it’s a pretty big jump.
There’s also no word if the voice services will be free or will be charged a fixed subscription, but if the latter happens, I doubt people will use it as there are other decent free alternatives, such as Viber, Skype, etc., available.
