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An illustration photo shows a man holding a
smart phone with a Facebook logo as its screen wallpaper in front of a WhatsApp
messenger logo, in Zenica February 20, 2014.
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WhatsApp may be hugely popular but its
forays into Asia, the world's biggest mobile market, have had mixed success,
raising questions about whether it can sustain the explosive growth Facebook
Inc cited to justify its $19 billion price tag.
Data from app metric company App Annie, for
example, shows that WhatsApp ranks as the top communications app in only three
of 13 Asian countries tracked - Hong Kong, India and Singapore.
"WhatsApp has been a strong player in
Asia, but in the past year has faced strong competition from LINE and
WeChat," said Neha Dharia, India-based analyst for Ovum, a technology
consultancy. "WhatsApp has not been displaced by these players, but has
seen stiff competition in growing its market share."
Facebook said on Wednesday it would buy
WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock, in a deal worth more than Facebook
raised in its own IPO.
For sure, WhatsApp has been phenomenally
successful. For many users it has replaced sending costly texts, or SMS
messages. Since its launch in 2009 it has built an active monthly user base of
450 million users.
A survey by marketing and research company
Jana found WhatsApp to be the most used messaging app in all the countries it
surveyed - India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico - beating
competitors by a huge margin. The reason: users most prize the basic functions
it offers - ad-free chat and photo sharing.
WhatsApp subscribers sent 18 billion
messages a day in January. The overall market is growing rapidly: According to
Ovum, 27.4 trillion such messages were sent last year; this year that figure
will be close to 69 trillion.
CHINA CALLING
By hooking up, Facebook and WhatsApp may be
able to take on those markets that have been elusive to Facebook so far. With
Facebook blocked in China, and lagging Twitter Inc and Naver Corp's LINE in
Japan, WhatsApp "is a potential avenue for Facebook" into those
markets, said Vincent Stevens, a senior manager for telecoms consultancy Delta
Partners.
Forrester, a consultancy, forecasts that
China will have more than 500 million smartphones this year.
And in the fast growing smartphone market
of India, says Neil Shah, research director of devices and ecosystems at
Counterpoint Research, local users now account for almost 9 percent of total
active WhatsApp users around the world - some 40 million of them.
But Facebook and WhatsApp face formidable
foes. Where once messaging apps were simply about messaging, now Tencent
Holdings Ltd's WeChat, LINE and KakaoTalk offer a slew of additional services,
from icons and games to buying goods and services.
"LINE and the others are very
different to WhatsApp. They're much more innovative in the business models they
engage in," says Michael Vakulenko of VisionMobile, a UK-based
consultancy. "They are innovating much faster than WhatsApp and going in a
different direction."
This could prove decisive in Asia - the
biggest battleground for social messaging apps - where no single player
dominates.
Data from market research company Nielsen,
for example, showed BlackBerry Messenger as the most downloaded messaging app
in Indonesia last October, the latest data available, while Viber, bought by
Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc for $900 million last week, was the most
popular in the Philippines, and LINE in Thailand.
WhatsApp was third in Indonesia, second in
Malaysia and not in the top-10 in the Philippines or Thailand. And while locals
say WhatsApp remains the default messaging app in Indonesia, some notice a
shift.
FICKLE FORTUNES
Jerry Justianto, who runs a radio station
network in Jakarta, says he's noticing fewer of his friends using WhatsApp than
before. "I think it's reached a plateau in Indonesia," he said.
"I see a lot of WhatsApp accounts in my list are inactive."
A survey by market research firm On Device
Research late last year found that while nearly two thirds of Indonesians
surveyed had installed WhatsApp, less than half used it at least once a week,
compared to three quarters of Brazilians who had installed it.
Part of the problem, Justianto says, is
that WhatsApp's approach of linking accounts to a phone number doesn't suit
Indonesians who change their SIM card frequently. "Some of my early
adopter friends are moving to Telegram messenger, where you can activate
multiple devices with one number."
Telegram, which offers much the same
features as WhatsApp, is evidence of the fickleness of users. The app is free
and heavily encrypted, and is popular in some countries. In Spain, for example,
it has risen from its launch last year to be the No.1 communications app in
Google's Play store, at the expense of WhatsApp, according to App Annie data.
This, said one executive at a handset
company in Spain, was partly because of a viral campaign among users to switch,
and partly because many users dumped WhatsApp before they were charged at the
end of their first, free year.
GETTING USERS TO USE MORE
Across Asia, the fragmentation is evident
to users such as Martin Tomlinson, Asia Pacific director for On Device
Research, who says he has installed at least six messaging apps for work:
"I need to have at least three of these on my phone because that's how my
clients communicate."
LINE, for example, considers its top
markets as not only Japan but also Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. Now, says
Simeon Cho, general manager at LINE Plus, which handles LINE's ex-Japan
business, the goal is less about winning new users than getting existing ones
to use the app more frequently.
Kakao, which started the KakaoTalk
messenger service in 2010 and has since grown rapidly to 130 million users,
said it was also focusing heavily on Southeast Asia, where there is relatively
low smartphone penetration and no dominant messenger service.
And for China's Tencent, KakaoTalk and LINE
are more of a threat overseas than WhatsApp, as the company's WeChat expansion
is focused on Southeast Asia.
WhatsApp would only pose a serious threat
if the likes of Tencent were to expand farther west. "This means it's now
going to be more difficult for LINE to win in North America and Europe,"
said Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based technology consultant.
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