I use WhatsApp internationally - that is part of my point. If you look at the conversations currently sitting in my WhatsApp inbox, only 2 of the 6 correspondents are in the US. Of the 6, 3 use iPhones, 2 Androids, 1 BB. Curiously, the BB is in the UK.
Maybe you meant to quote someone else, mad_eyes.
and all 6 probably reside in a western english speaking country. if u only have 6 whatsapp contacts then that shows how little it's used. i have around 40 bbm contacts, maybe 25-30 global contacts, and i wouldn't say that's a significant number by any means.
if my korean contacts have whatsapp, it's only to communicate with westerners. otherwise they use a korean 3rd party messenger.
all my mainland chinese contacts don't even know what whatsapp is. china, hong kong, taiwan, macau, & singapore all use different 3rd party messengers despite being so close in proximity and all speaking the
same language. likewise i'm sure there's a german version, russian version, french version, etc.
look the whole world could communicate through skype, msn, aim, whatever, but it doesn't. china uses qq, hk uses msn, phillipines is on yahoo, us is on aim, etc. different regions take to different products.
i understand the point u are trying to make. ur saying the potential of whatsapp, because of multi-platform, is huge. i agree completely. however, it's not just "oh make a chinese version of whatsapp and it'll be a hit". what poses a problem for all these 3rd party messengers is how each region takes to the product. plus, what good to americans is not the same for every culture. tudou & youtube are perfect examples, look at the user interface of both sites, they're completely different. chinese like busy, lots of stuff happening, cutesy figures all around. americans like clean, organized, nothing popping in my face, and built for efficiency. americans would typically find chinese sites confusing, tacky, distracting, etc. chinese would find american sites boring, mundane, uninspiring, etc. language, visual design, government blocking, political favoritism, etc. will always be an issue.
maybe ur saying that's not fair or right for government interference or promotion of a certain product. well boo hoo that's the reality of the global economy. countries would rather support a domestic product than a foreign one. china basically slapped around google to the point they pulled out of china completely. think about that. google is a huge multinational corporation and china essentially told them my way or the highway and threw up the middle finger.
can u tell i'm into economic discussions much?