Yet another product of Mobile World Congress, WhatsApp will soon have free voice calls by the middle of this year, thanks to the $19 billion takeover by Facebook.
WhatsApp will still remain independent even though it is owned by Facebook, well, this is according to Jan Koum, WhatsApp CEO.
The introduction of free calls would match rival application Viber’s similar offering.
“We are going to introduce voice on WhatsApp in the second quarter of this year,” WhatsApp founder Jan Koum said.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was the star speaker on the opening day of the industry fair, announced a stock and cash purchase of WhatsApp last week.
“Five years ago we had no users, no product,” said Koum.”Today we have 465m active users,” he said, adding that the company still had no marketing, relying mostly on word of mouth to prosper.
Japanese online shopping group Rakuten announced this month it would buy Viber’s Cyprus-based developer, Viber Media, for $900 million.
Viber, one of WhatsApp’s key rivals, offers free voice calls and messaging services.
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