Messaging Apps in the Mobile Industry - Research Paper Example

Messaging Apps College Messaging Apps In the last one decade, messaging apps have revolutionized the mobile industry with numerous applicationscoming into the market. The mobile business aims at ensuring communication is reliable and effective in the best way possible. The messaging apps facilitate the sending of images, messages, photos, music or voice over internet at a relatively lower cost than the traditional methods of sending the same. As a result, it is now possible to get any file or data in real time without the need to open emails. This utility has made it possible for messaging apps and social sites to be integrated into the operating systems of the modern smartphones. Some of the most common messaging apps that allow users to send free messaging texts, images, photos and free calls over a data connection include Whatsapp, Tango, Viber and iMessage, Skype among others (Olson, 2013). These apps have been a threat to the conventional message carriers considering that they have done away with the fees that people used to pay for the same services. As such, the traditional message carriers have to close shop or innovate better ways to attract customers. Therefore, the use of messaging Apps in sending contents through mobile networks has led to a transformation in the usage of mobile phones, making them ideal gadgets to communicate and receive content in real time. Messaging apps have challenged the incumbent social messaging sites such as Facebook and Alibaba. The apps facilitate chatting and sending of different contents a much better way compared to the conventional methods of sending the same contents. Tango is one of the most commonly used messaging apps. Currently, Tango has over 70 million monthly active users and enables members to send video and voice calls along text messages in real time (Kan 2014). Tango has capitalized on the fact that most of the calls that people make are not answered, especially at nights. As such, the company has come with special services to users that facilitate recording of messages, which are then viewed later after the person wakes up (Kan, 2014). Thus, the company has to store such messages in their servers, where they are accessible to any member with an android device, devices using apple operating system or through any web browser (Kan, 2014). The company plans to start making money by requiring that users pay minimal charges on using special services such as the Tango surprises that allows animations of messages. For instance, users of the Tango Surprises will get a single animation free of charge and unlimited access to the store of animations for just $1.98. Moreover, when retrieving Tango messages, users will be given up to five messages to retrieve free of any charge; any message beyond five messages will cost users 99 cents, an additional bunch of 10 messages will cost $1.98, with the cost increasing as the number of messages retrieved increases (Kan, 2014). As such, the company will depend on the active users to earn a decent income; with a user base of over 70 million people, the company stands to benefit immensely from these charges. Tango also obtains its money from deals singed with other companies who advertise in their services or who may acquire a stake in the company. For example, the Chinese giant, Alibaba Company has in the recent past invested $215 million in Tango to acquire a stake in the messaging space. Whatsapp is one of the most common messaging apps in use today. The app has a membership of more than 450 million users across the globe from the windows, android, apple and the blackberry market (Goldman, 2014). The messaging app is one of the few apps that have achieved massive growth since their inception. Anyone with a smartphone in the android, apple or windows market may download the app. The app allows the users to download and send photos, videos, voice message and text for free. In other words, the app acts as a social site where users have been sending more than 600 million photos per day, more than the number of photos sent through Facebook per day (Goldman, 2014). This could suggest that Whatsapp is the most used social network across the globe today. The app has over 70% of its users active compared to 62% of active members in Facebook (Goldman, 2014), which might imply that the app has more users than Facebook per day. Although the app is free to use, the company intends to charge a minimal fee of $1 annually for every user. Moreover, currently, Whatsapp has auxiliary services such as games that users can access after paying a small fee, which promises a significant income flow with increased usage of the app. Currently, Facebook has bought the company at a whooping cost of $19 billion, a cost that startled stakeholders in the social networking sector. The app does not offer any over internet services but has its focus on smartphones. iMessage is a messaging app that works in all the apple devices alone. That is, the app can only work in the iPhone, iPod and the iPad touch, all running the iOS five or higher operating system (Donnelly, 2013). Moreover, the app is integrated with the Mac operating system running the Mountain Lion software. This could suggest that the app could be used as an online voice carrier similar to other applications such as Skype in apple products. Users of the iMesage can posndt photos, videos, location or contacts to other apple users, which is then synced across the rest of apple devices when using an Ipod, Ipad or the Mac (Donnelly, 2013). The app has to use data connection to send or receive any messages or any other cellular data but does not use the network services of the carrier. In other, words the sending contents does not cost anything when communicating within the country or even overseas, though one has to pay the data connection charges (Donnelly, 2013). Therefore, apple makes money though the data used when sending iMessages, though the charges are relatively low compared to messaging charges. Compared to other applications, iMessage has one of the lowest user populations in the market, though it is one of the few apps that are integrated with web based services such as Skype. Skype is one of the most used messaging apps that have been integrated into mobile phones and facilitates messaging over the internet. Currently, the app is predicted to have slightly over 145 million users across the globe and facilitates sending files, photos, video calls, text messages among other messaging contents among users. One way through which Skype makes money is through partnership with various companies such as Nokia or MySpace. Moreover, Skype makes money through advertisements and charges a small fee to use some of its services, with about 9 million users paying for services out of the 145 million users (Miller, 2011). As such, Skype offers its services free with a view of charging for these services later. Skype also gets money from the sale of a stake in the company. Microsoft in 2011 paid $8.5 billion for Skype in an acquisition bid for the internet calling company, which raised a storm in the social networking market (Miller, 2011). Snapchat is another messaging app that is a potential threat to social networks such as Facebook. The app allows members to share photos then disappear after a short moment, unlike in Facebook, sharing of photos that are permanent; these photos may be used against one’s will when someone hacks into an account. Therefore, Snapchat targets those people who share private photos that they would not like any unauthorized people to gain access. By the end of September 2013, the company had over 350 million users a day, sending photos through the app (Goldman, 2013). However, the company does not make any money online as of now, making it one of the few messaging apps with a huge user base offering their services for free. All the same, the company may be contemplating making money by selling ads similar to Twitter and through selling stakes in the company considering that Facebook had made a $3 billion offer for a stake in the company, which was declined (Goldman, 2013). For example, in June, 2013, the company had raised over $60 million from investors who had valued the company at about $800 million. Another messaging app that has not made any revenue yet but has a high user population is Pinterest. As observed, messaging apps are closely edging social sites such as Facebook from business, considering they are more effective and user specific than social sites. Currently, social sites such as Facebook and online marketers like Alibaba have made significant investments in these messaging apps, which indicate the importance of such apps to marketers and social site users. As such, the messaging apps have made significant changes to the use of social sites today with users preferring the messaging apps more than social sites. References Donnelly, T. (2013). What is iMessage? Retrieved from. http://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/a-guide-to-imessage Goldman R. (2013). Snapchat Doesn’t Make Any Money, So Why Is It Worth So Much? Abc News. Retrieved from. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/11/snapchat-doesnt-make-any-money-why-is-it-worth-so-much/ Goldman, D. (2014).Why WhatsApp is worth $19 billion. CNN Money. Retrieved from. http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/20/technology/social/whatsapp-19-billion/ Kan, M. (2014). Chinas Alibaba invests $215 million in Tango messaging app. PcWorld. Retrieved from. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2110300/chinas-alibaba-invests-215-million-in-tango-messaging-app.html Miller, H. (2011).Why Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for Skype, which is mostly free. The Christian Monitor. Retrieved from. http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2011/0510/Why-Microsoft-paid-8.5-billion-for-Skype-which-is-mostly-free Olson, P. (2013).Teenagers say goodbye to Facebook and hello to messenger apps. The Guardian. Retrieved from. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus Read More