WhatsApp Invades Brazil
Texting never really caught on in Brazil with its extremely high cost. Sending an SMS reportedly cost 55 times higher than what North American mobile users spend on texting making largely inaccessible for ordinary residents. When Facebook-owned WhatsApp entered the Brazilian market almost 7 years ago, users started to gravitate toward the platform with its free messaging regardless of the users' mobile carrier.
Currently, 96% of Brazilians prefer to use the platform as their main communication method on their mobile as reported by Harvard Business Review. It was originally conceptualized, created, and later promoted with the primary purpose of facilitating messaging. In most parts of the world, it competes with similar mobile communication platforms such as Facebook's Messenger, Skype, Slack, and Telegram.
In Brazil, however, it takes on a much bigger role and more significant function: a one-stop shop for communication solutions for everyone from private to public sectors and from transactions to relationships.
"It has changed how users expect to interact with companies and brands online, and it is forcing firms to use messaging to fulfil customer expectations," Fernanda Saboia, a Rio-based senior strategist as quoted in a report by WARC.
Meanwhile, the apps latest software version now incorporates more sophisticated technology and encryption making sure that messages sent between or among people with their devices. The development was announced by WhatsApp founder Jan Koum as he talked how the latest version can every call, message, photo, video, file and voice messages sent through the platform (including group chats), The Indian Panorama reported.
"This means that if any group of people uses the latest version of WhatsApp-whether that group spans two people or ten-the service will encrypt all messages, phone calls, photos, and videos moving among them. And that's true on any phone that runs the app, from iPhones to Android phones to Windows phones to old school Nokia flip phones. With end-to-end encryption in place, not even WhatsApp's employees can read the data that's sent across its network," as reported by TechDirt.
