Apple's new apps aim to kill WhatsApp and Dropbox
Apple last night announced the iOS8 for mobile devices with enhanced features for its messenger and cloud solution in a bid to take on the challenge by rival messenger and cloud solutions.
There has been intense competition to the iOS messenger as well as the iCloud service with competing solutions such as WhatsApp, LINE and Snapchat and cloud solutions such as Dropbox and OneNote.
The popularity of services such as WhatsApp and LINE and even Snapchat is already known and Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp for $19bn was a clear indication.
With its latest announcement Apple has clearly taken on the competition more aggressively.
What’s interesting is Apple has introduced features from various other popular messenger and cloud solutions and integrated them in one place, hoping that iOS users will once again start using native services.
Integrated into the messenger are new features which will enable a user to send voice notes, listen to incoming voice notes by just placing the phone close to the ears, multiple photo and video share, video chat with added features of a self-destructing video shared through the messenger, group messaging service, time sensitive location sharing and many more.
WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum was clearly not happy with what Apple did.
Questioning the innovativeness of Apple he tweeted: “very flattering to see Apple "borrow" numerous WhatsApp features into iMessage in iOS 8.”
Similarly with its iCloud solutions it has enabled access to all photos and videos across enabled devices. One can even edit the photos on the cloud.
The iCloud Drive is similar to Dropbox and Microsoft Onedrive enabling a user to store any type of documents on its servers.
But will Apple really win this competition? For those who are stuck to iOS devices and are pretty sure they would never migrate to an Android or a Windows phone, it will be a no brainer. They might and will even start using the new Apple services that will be built in into the eco system.
But in an age where consumers change their handsets more frequently than their toothbrush, it would be difficult to imagine that users would be willing to be tied down to one particular platform.
Unlike the iOS messenger, WhatsApp is backed up on the cloud and usable on multiple platforms – be it iOS or Android or Windows mobile.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp which had disappeared from the Windows store though due to some performance related bugs, is back with added new features.
WhatsApp taken off Windows phone store
Among the new features are chat backgrounds, enhanced privacy settings and customised notification tones.
With regard to Apple’s Cloud solution it would again be interesting to see to what extent it would be compatible on other platforms.
The iCloud Drive will work on Windows platform but not on Windows mobile. So does it not work on Android.
The iCloud Drive provides 5GB storage for free and 20GB for $12 per year and 200GB for $48 per year.
In comparison Microsoft’s OneDrive offers 7GB of free storage and an additional 3GB for uploading your photos from your windows smartphone.
An additional 50GB is priced at $25 annually and ,while 100GB is offered for $50 per year and 200GB at $100. Dropbox has just 2GB of online storage free while the 100GB plan is priced at $99 an year while 200GB plan is priced at $199.
In March Google slashed the price for cloud storage by almost 80 per cent and introduced 100GB storage for just $1.99 per month and 1TB storage for $9.99.
Cloud war hots up as Google cuts storage by up to 80%