With several years of delay, the long awaited feature of video calling finally came to Whatsapp. As announced officially yesterday the popular messaging application through your blog, after a few months of testing in its beta version. “In the next few days, more than 1000 million users of WhatsApp will be able to make video calls between Android users, iPhone and Windows Phone devices”, they explained, but most likely that will go activating in stages, in different countries.
As happens with voice calls already offered by the application, the service will be free, and will use the Internet connection of the mobile phone or wi-fi instead of the minutes on a voice plan. In addition, the video calls will be encrypted point-to-point messages. But, until now, the brand new function does not allow you make calls from the version of WhatsApp for desktop pcs, nor will support video calls in group.
The company will be able to compete now with other services as well as the classic Skype, Microsoft, or WeChat, the company’s messaging china that have more than 800 million users. And also with the application Duo, which replaced Google Hangouts, FaceTime, Apple, or Messenger, of Facebook. There are even other players in the market that could be affected as the own telephone that are increasingly threatened by services, so-called OTT (over the top), which offer communications but do not have their own networks and use the networks already deployed by these companies.
But despite setting out to offer this service with a delay compared to its competitors, WhatsApp has a wide advantage in its favor: its 1000 million monthly active users in more than 180 countries, making it the messaging platform is more widely used in several regions of the world, despite not being as big in the united States.
For its part, Skype was the leader in platform video calls between users of PCs but was losing market against the mobile applications. That’s why, this week looked to be updated with the introduction of new functions: can be used from any browser and without having to enter a user name and password.
On its blog, Whatsapp has made it clear that his bet is that the service calls are then mass rapidly among all of its users: “we Want you to be available to all, not just those who can afford the phones more expensive and novel, or for those who live in the countries with the best networks of mobile telephony”.
For now, the operation of the video calls is very simple, though users will not find an icon specific to video call. First, open a chat and click the icon of voice calls; and just then that you will have the option to choose between voice call or video call. Still, the company did not disclose what is the real consumption of data on 3G or 4G. It is estimated that, for example, a video call through FaceTime consumes 25 MB per ten minutes.
all in all, WhatsApp plans to continue incorporating changes in a short time: they are already working on a new function, with the name Status, which will enable users to make one or several videos and images and publish them as stories that their contacts will be able to see and that will be deleted in 24 hours, in the style of Snapchat. It is also very similar to the concept of Stories of Instagram, another company of Facebook, which was implemented this year.
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