TEP CONFERENCE • INTERNATIONAL WEEK
Outlook for Messaging Apps in the US
By Dr. Simon Lorenz
M
essaging apps have officially
surpassed social networks in
amount of engaged active users. All signs point to messaging apps being
the “next big thing” for the US digital economy. Today, about 2.5 billion people are
registered to use at least one messaging
app, according to advisory firm Activate.
By 2018, the firm expects that number to
be 3.6 billion, 90% of the world’s Internet
enabled population.
“There is no other technology that is
more closely examined and discussed in
Silicon Valley than messaging,” says Jenny
Lee, a managing partner at GGV Capital.
Take the Chinese Internet giant
Tencent Holdings Ltd. for example.
In 2011, Tencent Holdings launched a
smartphone app so people could send
each other free text messages. Five years
later, WeChat’s hundreds of millions of
users are on the platform ordering groceries, sending videos, and even managing doctor appointments.
Monopolistic Competition
The most interesting aspect of this emerging market, both in the US and internationally, is that there is a variety of competition with no single dominating messaging
platform.
India touts 70 million users on
WhatsApp, as of November 2014. That
number has likely increased considerably
since the total user base for WhatsApp has
grown from 600 million to 800 million in
less than a year. Nations such as Mexico
and Brazil tend to favor WhatsApp, as does
much of Western Europe.
WeChat continues rising in popularity
in China. The app launch coincided with
the expansion of China’s middle class; for
many consumers, the app was their introduction to the Internet.
WeChat and other messaging apps initially won users looking to avoid texting
costs that are 26 times higher in China
than in the US, according to Activate.
“There’s no great example in the West,”
says Ted Livingston, chief executive of
Canada’s Kik Messenger Inc., which introduced a texting app in 2009.
While dissenters may cite Facebook’s
Messenger app at 1 billion monthly users,
the app has been criticized for “forcing”
users to use the technology (by splitting the
feature from the core Facebook platform in
an effort to push external apps). Facebook
Messenger has also yet to be utilized as a
major messaging platform with in-app features such as booking tickets, managing
schedules, etc. The market (share) is for
the taking.
Business Insider recently noted,
“Messaging apps are about more than
messaging. The first stage of the chat app
revolution was focused on growth. In the
next phase, companies will focus on building out services and monetizing chat apps’
massive user database.”
Utilizing Messaging Apps for
Business
If businesses want to stay on the cutting
edge and keep customer contact open and
easy, they need to adapt to this new wave
of communication. According to a new
study from the Mobile Ecosystem Forum
(MEF) more consumers are now using
messaging apps such as WhatsApp to chat
to businesses. In fact, 76% of consumers
have received communication in the form
of SMS from businesses before, whilst 65%
engage via chat apps.
Mobile messages are a direct route to
your stakeholders, with mobile messages
having a 98% open rate, while e-mail has
only a 20% open rate (Mobile Marketing
Watch). In addition, text messaging has a
45% response rate, while e-mail only has a
6% response rate (Velocify).
Messaging apps are
about more than
messaging.
We find that niche, industry-based applications can be found among the message
app hype. According to one poll, the activities people with text capabilities would
most prefer to do via text are: check order
status (38%), schedule or change appointments (32%), and make or confirm reservations (31%).
At Klara, we enable mobile messaging for
secure internal and external communication. We call our model B2B2C as the sim-
ple messaging app interface allows for interand intra-messaging capabilities. Unlike
e-mail or phone, messaging apps such as
Klara can be used to triage and coordinate
messages within a business workflow.
Pharmacists, physicians, insurance
agents, and ultimately, patients, are seeing
the transformative power of messaging
applications in their health management.
As we approach 2017, messaging apps will
continue to grow and penetrate industries
such as healthcare, finance, and retail.
Dr. Simon Lorenz is the founder and
managing director of Klara.
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Report”
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Knotel, Battery Park
How Meetups Can Grow Your Business
By Odile Beniflah
M
eetup makes it easy for anyone
to start or find a local group
where people are meeting
up face to face. Meetups help people get
training, get jobs, get funding, launch businesses, and help companies take off. They
inspire and change lives. They are engines
for economic growth and innovation.
How?
Meetups are fueled by the magic that
happens when people of shared passions
and interests get together in person to
pursue their dreams together. Whether
your dream is to teach coding skills to
create job opportunities for refugees
(