The real reason why Facebook has paid 19 million for Whatsapp

The news is already in all media. purchase Facebook Whatsapp 19,000 million. 

The world's largest social network with a natural ally in the mobile world, since its Facebook Messenger has not obtained the expected results in almost any market and few months ago, Snapchat reject a bid that was about 3,000 million.

Purchasing Whatsapp is also the most expensive that the company makes, after comprase Facebook Instagram 1,000 million dollars in 2012.

What's behind this purchase? What are the real reasons that led to Facebook to pay no less than 40 dollars for each user of Whatsapp? First we should analyze the situation in which he found Facebook Messenger the solution to the social network wanted to compete in the field of mobile instant messaging.

After re-launching the application last November from Facebook claimed that their use had increased no less than 70%. however hid the fact that this growth and in general the use of this app was popular only in United States and Canada.

In the rest of the world, as we see in the chart above, its use is residual. Following the chart, what we are witnessing is a fairly fragmented market applications.

It seems clear that Whatsapp is the solution that prevails in Europe, with countries like Spain with a penetration of 97%.

In Asia however things change.Kakaotalk Line and major share markets. And in Oceania and Latin America, the competition between Messenger and Whatsapp is more accurate, but always in favor of the company that runs Jan Koum.

Whatsapp is also beginning to be the benchmark in emerging countries. The following table (lower graph), developed based on a study by Jana Mobile,  it's easy to see how Whatsapp is already the preferred choice of communication in countries such as India, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico.

His only real competition, Line and WeChat in some Asian countries, while Facebook Messenger does not reach the 10% share of use in any of the countries studied here.

And not just the fact that Whatsapp has 450 million users, but also the speed at which adoption is growing this app worldwide.

Just as told in TechCrunch , Onavo data (another startup bought by Facebook, specializing in business intelligence), show the spectacular growth of Whatsapp in number of users during the first five years, especially if you compare them with other applications popular as Gmail, Twitter, Skype or even Facebook itself.

Finally it should be noted that this is not the first time that Facebook tries to buy Whatsapp.

According to the same means of communication American, conversations for purchase have been developed over the past two years, rejecting Whatsapp again and again until finally offers, "had no choice" but to accept 19,000 million who put on the table.