Hike messenger has come up with its first ever acquisition by buying Zip Phone, a company involved in free voice calling. Eventually, the firm will be able to launch free app based calling services that its competitors are coming up with to lure users.
Zip Phone founded by Anuj Jain in theUShas developed a voice calling application with compatibility to serve on a global scale. It is evident that Hike Messenger will soon support such calling services to keep it on par with its challengers that exist. However, there is no word on the exact size of the deal.
Regarding this, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chief Executive of Hike stated that the technology of Zip Phone will let Hike Messenger to bring free voice calling to the market pretty faster. He started that support for free voice calling is a most wanted feature from the existing users of the messaging application.
Hike is an OTT (over-the-top) service backed by Bharti Softbank that is a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises andJapanbased Softbank Corp. The former is chaired by billionaire businessman Sunil Mittal and has managed to gain over 35 million users in a couple of years since its debut.
As per the industry analysts, instant messaging companies have to integrated features including voice calling to their services as the next step and it would provide to be logical. As per Jayanth Kolla, Co-Founder and Partner at Telecom Research firm Convergence Catalyst, if Hike provides voice calling it will be a strategic move to stay competitive. He added that voice calling is a great addition to instant messaging in the booming trend wherein internet based calling is getting highly popular, especially among international callers.
Notably, the direct challengers for Hike Messenger are WhatsApp, Viber and Line. Of these, Viber and Line have already introduced voice calling feature and WhatsApp is also planning to come up with such a feature in the near future. Consequently, Hike Messenger will have to hit back the competition with the free voice calling feature to keep its place.
