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SOON AFTER COMPLETING its deal with Facebook, which rose to $21.8 billion after it was completed early this month, most people would be forgiven for assuming it would start looking at ways to make money.
Not so according to its co-founder and CEO Jan Koum who revealed the company had no plan to generate revenue in the short-term.
Speaking at the Code/Mobile conference, Koum said that for now, the focus was on growth and not monetisation, echoing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claims that it wouldn’t be a priority for the app over the next few years.
“For a bit, we can only focus on growth only and not have to do any kind of experimentation with monetisation”, said Koum.
Most of WhatsApp revenue comes from user subscriptions and not social ads like Facebook’s products. The app is free for the first year, before charging a €0.99 annual subscription fee.
At Facebook’s latest earnings call, Zuckerberg said his aim was to get the company’s apps like WhatsApp and Instagram to reach one billion users as part of a five-year plan, saying “Products aren’t really interesting as a business until they have a billion people using them.”
At the same event, WhatsApp made revenue of $15 million in the first half of 2014. However, it made a net loss of $232.5 million, $206.5 million of it coming from the issuing of stock. Despite this, Koum has said that they have no plans to bring advertising to the app.
The app has more than 600 million users worldwide and it plans to introduce voice calls early next year.
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Has anyone paid that €0.99 fee? I’ve definitely had it for over a year and I haven’t been asked to pay it.
Yea I had deleted it then when I reinstalled it back in July they wanted 99 cent off me. Needless to say I didn’t install it. Will stick to viber, can’t go wrong. Anything to do with Facebook isn’t a good thing
That’s cause its tied to your phone number & not the installation of the app. In fairness 99 cent for an annual ad free service like that ain’t bad.
Ah yea I know that, I just forgot when I had originally installed it so when I seen the year up I didn’t bother. I was never a huge whatsapp user, always used viber so didn’t see the point but yea 99 cent a year isn’t a whole lot if people don’t mind spending it and use it a lot.
Been using it 4 years and haven’t paid. But I’ll always use whatsapp. Broke my smartphone many times and stuck using and old Nokia. Still had whatsapp because they support every platform.
Paid €1.29 when I downloaded it 4 years ago but nothing since.
Fun fact.
Jan Koum, at one time the largest collective owner of dick pics ever known to man.
Probably ’cause he just made a few billion. The ‘stard :)
have your say