That’s a stunning sum for the five-year old company. But WhatsApp has been able to hold its weight against messaging heavyweights like Twitter (TWTR), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) Skype. WhatsApp has upwards of 450 million users, and it is adding an additional million users every day.
Referring to WhatsApp’s soaring growth, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call,
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app for smartphones, according to OnDevice Research.
Buying WhatsApp will only bolster Facebook’s already strong position in the crowded messaging world.
Messenger, Facebook’s a standalone messaging app for mobile devices, is second only to WhatsApp in its share of the smartphone market.
