The IM war is real. A number of Instant Messaging Application are at war to establish themselves in the India. Without a doubt, the leading application at the moment is Whatsapp. I'm pretty sure that whoever is reading this blog right now, has a Whatsapp account. I'm going to discuss some of their the features and pos and cons of these application.
Let's go through the basics first. The whole reason we use these Instant Messaging application is that it connects us with our friends and family 24/7. All you need is a mobile device that supports continuous internet connection. Most of the Java phones don't support this feature. For instance, Nokia C2-03, which is a Java touch phone, does not support this feature and hence does not support Whatsapp. The Symbian OS, Andriod, etc. have a continuous internet connection support. These applications import the phone's contact list and connects us with our friends who also have the same application installed on their phones.
Today, Whatsapp has captured the Indian market like none other. You may think of Whatsapp as the "Microsoft" of IM applications. There are better applications out there but Whatsapp came in first and took over the market. There are alternatives which are way better. Applications like Hike, Viber, Line, Kik offer us many other features other than just instant messaging. But they haven't been able to replace the leader in the market yet.
When it comes to functionality, Viber is a promising application as it offers free calls. It uses VoIP( Voice over Internet Protocol ) to provide this functionality to it's users. Hike, on the other hand, claims to send "offline messages". Both of these applications provide equal or more features than the current leader in the market.
Let me try to explain why Whatsapp has captured the market. The reason is similar to the reason why Omegle is the most popular anonymous online chat website. Omegle has the highest number of users online at any time which, in turn, increases the probability of a user to find someone with a common interest. The point is that Omegle already has a huge user database. Similarly, Whatsapp already has so many users registered that the probability of finding friends / contacts on registered on Whatsapp is more than on any other IM application. To prove my point, i would like to ask you to install Hike on your phone( I'm assuming you already have Whatsapp installed. It's not a long shot. ) Import the contacts from each of these application and check how many of your contacts are active on these IM applications. You'll find a difference which will prove my point.
Hike and Viber have declared war against the leading application in the market. They've started ad campaigns targeting Whatsapp. In one of the ads for Hike, they use the slogan "Switch to Hike, no more Whatscrap!" They're not playing around anymore. Hike is in full offensive mode. They want to replace Whatsapp and that's their #1 agenda. Truth being told, it's working! I've met people who have downloaded Hike just because they wanted to see how it worked. The ads are working.
And, just so you all know, Hike's "offline messaging" is nothing but an sms service. When the internet connection isn't there, Hike uses the device OS to send an sms to the target device. The application on the target device interprets this sms as a message from another Hike account and displays the message via Hike itself. Since, Hike is an India based company, it has made sure that all sms sent via the application is free. So the user will never know that an sms is being sent. The only drawback is that, if the user doesn't know how this "offline messaging" works and tries to send one to a friend in London, the sms cost will be deducted from his account for sending an international sms.
Final verdict : Whatsapp is, as I previously stated, the "Microsoft" of IM applications. It's there to stay. Other applications offer more features and are also rising in popularity but are not even close to replacing the leader.
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