For years one of the premiere smartphone instant messaging apps has been WhatsApp Messenger. Before iMessage was developed, many iPhone users regularly used WhatsApp as their primary messaging platform in order to avoid using text/multimedia messages. While over the years WhatsApp has been a variety of prices, generally the iPhone price has been set at a one time fee of 99 cents – the company has announced this has changed. Similar to its Android counterpart, the app will be free to initially download, but each year there will be a 99 cent fee to continue use of WhatsApp.
The company made the announcement on a blog post explaining that they “feel that this model will allow [them] to become the communications service of the 21st century, and provide [users] the best way to stay in touch with [their] friends and family with no ads getting in the way.”
Although 99 cents does not seem like a large fee, I personally know users who leave WhatsApp on their phone and use it 1-2 times per year. Many of these users I know now primarily use iMessage so I’ll be interested to see if these users pay the fee or just remove the app. While there are free competitors available, WhatsApp remains as one of the most commonly used (non-device-integrated) messengers in the mobile market and a messenger is only good if there is a user base for it.
