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1 day salary for chat app?

Are you nuts?




Did you know people below the poverty line would by $20 S40 feature phones just to be able to run WhatsApp? The other 2G phones cost less than half that amount, but you had to pay $0.1-$0.2 per SMS sent, in that light, spending $1 per year for WhatsApp's unlimited messages on a PAYG data package was a steal.

So no, I am not nuts, you just didn't think through the value proposition.


Why not any other free chat app e.g discord?


Network effects, similar to present-day Facetime in the US. There's Zoom and Google Meet, but if your family and friends are already FaceTiming, you're pressured into buying a iDevice.


People pay months of salary for a phone, what's one dollar for the most used app?


One day salary for app is a lot.

Only web browser justifies that


> Only web browser justifies that

There's a surprisingly number of people whose usage of the Internet is exclusively through WhatsApp, and may not even know what a "browser" is or how to use it to get in touch with their contacts.


I use whatsapp for more than 10 years, it would be quite cheap if it cost only 1 day of work and nothing more. That is not possible, tho.


Phones were more expensive back then. Someone earning $1/day mostly didn't use WhatsApp.




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