Posted March 18, 2013 by Mufaddal Fakhruddin in

WhatsApp to Bring Annual Subscription Model to iOS Users

WhatsApp will soon change its subscription model for iOS users to an annual fee. This will bring it in line with how the app is distributed to other platforms like Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, where users pay $1/year instead of an one-off $0.99 fee like iOS users are paying now.

“We’re relaxed on dates, but definitely this year. It’s on the road map,” CEO Jan Koum said in an interview with Dutch journalist Alexander Klopping (the interview is reproduced in two blogs, Tweakers and Techtastic).

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps on the scene, with more than 100 million active users across multiple platforms. Fun stat: around 17 billion messages are transmitted daily.

Now, WhatsApp is wholly mobile, but a desktop app is strongly requested, however Koum said the company is not looking into at the moment. "We feel strongly that the world is moving to mobile and [so] we want to be mobile-only. Your phone is with you all the time, and desktop is to many becoming a secondary experience. [So] our answer is no, not anytime soon," he said.

Via TechCrunch.

Mufaddal Fakhruddin (follow @mufaaf on twitter)

Mufaddal Fakhruddin is a Marketing Degree unlocker'er, but decided he would rather criticize products than sell them. So he became a writer. With Tbreak Media for the past 7 years, Mufaddal writes for Tbreak Tech and sister site, IGN Middle East.