How Apps Like WhatsApp, WeChat Helps Make Money While Offering Free Texting And Calling6617615
Ever wondered the way a messaging app could make money whilst giving free texting and calling? WhatsApp users at India could be surprised to learn that there's a lot more to messaging apps than communicating. Here's how: by offering services such as digital payments, online shopping and also content.
China's WeChat is probably the perfect example of the vast possibilities that messaging apps hold. With well over Nine hundred million monthly active users, WeChat assists them to do every thing from messaging, purchasing grocery, hailing cabs, ordering online food and also offline payments at restaurants - all this without having to go to another app. These services not merely provide the company outstanding customer stickiness, they also create a outstanding revenue model.
For now, WeChat's competitors outside China such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber and also Line are behind the curve on this front, although some have begun on the road to becoming bigger platforms. "The actual reason chat apps are widening beyond communications is to create a sustainable monetisation strategy," said Neha Dharia, a senior analyst with a focus on messaging at London-based research firm Ovum. "Chat apps are shifting away from being simply a provider of communication tools chat, voice and also video) to becoming a platform for the exchange of services, payment mechanisms and also content consumption."
WhatsApp, the biggest messaging app on the planet with 1.3 billion every month active users, introduced a business version in India early on this week. "Based on research, we know that people are employing WhatsApp to speak to businesses. make business messaging more convenient for individuals and much more productive for businesses," a WhatsApp representative said in respond to ET's questions. Whatsapp Business is a different app from Whatsapp Messenger, aimed largely at giving a direct communicating platform to smaller businesses, a lot of who may be using WhatsApp already.
Whilst Whatsapp has kept the service free, it might extend it to larger businesses with added features for example analytics, by which it could demand a usage fee at a later stage, thus making a revenue model, segment watchers said. This also is geared at raising subscriber connect which it can make use of for future monetization of their other services. The greater agenda - and a more important one - for these firms is to get active users to invest more time on the app or services and make it viable for revenue generation, according to experts.
"Each and every technology company is vying for consumer stickiness, interaction as well as time invested on the app, and in order to keep them around the app's ecosystem they are widening themselves to become platforms. Merely being messaging apps that provide cost-free services won't be a good revenuegeneration model," said Jayanth Kolla, founding father of Bengaluru-based research firm Convergence Catalyst.
