Messenger Apps Are Changing Mobile, to the Benefit of Brands
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At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the mega-event for all things mobile, the rapid rise of messenger apps surely will dominate conversations following Facebook’s deal to acquire WhatsApp for a staggering $16 billion. This comes just after news that Japan’s Rakuten is acquiring Viber, another messaging app, for $900 million.
The deals signal a shift that’s fast changing mobile, as messaging apps evolve into platforms. Deloitte forecasts that in 2014, these services will deliver some 50 billion messages a day globally, as against 21 billion SMS messages. User numbers have climbed quickly for a crop of these services, with WhatsApp out ahead with 450 million monthly active users; more than 70 percent of them are active on a given day. South Korea’s Line reports more than 350 million registered users, Viber and China’s WeChat are closing in on 300 million.
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