WhatsApp is now free to download on the iPhone, with the messaging app moving to the same annual subscription model that its Android app currently uses. Until now, iPhone users have had to pay a one-off fee of 69p when first downloading the app, but now will pay a fee of $0.99 (65p) every year.
WhatsApp eschews ads in favour of charging for use, and this change has been planned for some time. The change will only affect new users and not those who have already downloaded the app.
The app is over-the-top (OTT) messaging service that uses the phone's data or Wi-Fi connection to send and receive data. Earlier this year, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum claimed the the app had a bigger user base than Twitter, and on 13 June the service handled a record 27 billion messages in a 24-hour period.
Even though unlimited text messaging is now an almost universally standard feature of UK phone contracts, the popularity of comparatively cheap OTT messaging apps continues to grow. Pay as you go customers often still have to pay over the odds for texts, and even contract customers incur extra charges when texting from abroad. The ability to send messages from anywhere in the world using Wi-Fi and send picture messages for free give the apps the edge over the traditional text.
Many phones now come with free messaging apps built in -- the two most famous examples being iMessage (for iOS and OS X devices) and BBM (currently only available on BlackBerry devices, though iOS and Android apps are coming soon). The downside of these native apps is that the person you're messaging will usually need to be using the same brand of phone as you, which is why cross-platform apps like WhatsApp and Viber are now dominating the market.
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