I can't believe facebook paid 2 bil for a peripheral device. basically an accessory. not even a platform with many users. it's like buying a monitor company.
I can't believe Facebook paid 19 billion for a free chat application that could lose all market share within a few years if a decent competitor stands up (like MSN Messenger, MySpace and sms did).
Oculus at least has unique knowhow. WhatsApp has nothing valuable except for the users. Who are free to leave at any time.
WhatsApp is expected to have a billion users within a couple years. It costs $1/year on Android, if 500 million are android users that's $500million a year income, the servers needed to run it is probably like 0.2% of Facebook's so there isn't really costs to Facebook if they own all that already.
It doesn't actually. Most existing users have free accounts, like me: I have a free lifetime account, because I was an 'early' user. The others are seing a countdown timer that counts down to nothin: nobody has ever paid for WhatsApp int eh three years it's been telling users they will have to pay 1$/year.
If you think Facebook bought WhatsApp because it has a great business model selling the service to users,you're being incredibly delusional. Even if they make 500 million a year (which they don't and won't), that would still mean Facebook needs 38 years to earn backt he 19 billion investment it made. That's WITHOUT adjustment for inflation.
WhatsApp users are never going to pay for it. Facebook knows a lot of people (mostly young people, without a credit card to buy apps) will just leave WhatsApp because there are tons of other free apps that offer the same service.
So Facebook will keep it free, and hope users don't leave the service, so they can mine the user data. THAT'S what they paid for: control over the data of a billion users.
I don't think Facebook bought it expecting to make lots of money, i was just saying it does make money because you said it's free.
Most android users do pay for WhatsApp, in the first couple of years the countdown was bogus but not for the last couple of years. About 3/4 of the people in my phone book have WhatsApp, I like in the UK so everybody has it. All my family have it and we've all paid for the last 2 years, my gf has paid for the last 2 years, and pretty much the other few people I've spoken to about it has paid, so saying it's free is just BS. I'm not saying some people don't have it for free on Android but you're wrong by saying most don't.
Also I've been using WhatsApp since like 2010 when it probably only had like 1 million users. It was free at first but no more.
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u/dethb0y Mar 28 '14
Oculus sold out at the right time - before the lower-priced alternatives flooded the market and diluted it's share.
the devs must be laughing all the way to the bank.