Ever since it has been launched, the
number of WhatsApp users has been increasing exponentially. On the eve
of the New Year, a whopping 7 billion messages were sent and 11 billion
delivered. With the WhatsApp messaging service actually being adopted by
millions, many Indian users of the app are believed to have received
most of their greetings for the new year via this service.
WhatsApp
is the preferred messaging service offering cross-platform mobile
messaging for Windows phone, Nokia, iPhone, Android as well as
Blackberry. The company has not been very forthcoming with regard to its
user base and it is believed, with its 18 million milestone, some
numbers will be revealed this year.
What
started out as a niche app, WhatsApp has grown to be the most popular
messaging service among smartphones and used even more than SMS. The app
is now an integral component of any smartphone device in the same
league as Twitter and Facebook.
Although
there were rumours about Facebook acquiring the user friendly messaging
service, it later proved to be false with Facebook Messenger being
launched by the social networking giant. WhatsApp is free for most
platforms except iOS for which a free download was made available for
the holidays recently.
The messaging
service also recently offered subscribers an unlimited access to the
service for Rs.16/month in a tie-up with Reliance Communications. It is
hoped by the increasing user base that other carriers would follow this
lead and dish out attractive plans.
18
billion is certainly a tough feat for any messaging service to achieve
with the number of messages being more than the world's population! But
as they say records are meant to be broken and it's only a matter of
time before this one is.
