Chat Apps Will Disrupt Global Telecoms Sector

The recent purchase of WhatsApp by Facebook for $19 billion signified a new milestone in the evolution of the mobile Internet as a technology platform. Not only is the new chat app seen as a threat to Facebook’s dominance as the leading social networking platform (hence the astronomical valuation) it is also about to have a highly disruptive impact on the telecoms sector. In just over four years WhatsApp has grown to half the size of Facebook and is projected to reach 1 billion users within the next few years. During this period WhatsApp has destroyed the $120 billion SMS (texting) market and is now planning on disrupting voice mail, the traditional revenue stream of telecoms companies.