> And the timing was perfect. Data plans and smartphones were just coming into the fore, and WhatsApp popped in as an alternative to the extremely inferior MMS

> And the timing was perfect. Data plans and smartphones were just coming into the fore, and WhatsApp popped in as an alternative to the extremely inferior MMS option, and gave people a free way to communicate across borders. The creator of whatsapp built it to help with his globetrotting - so he could set a message saying what timezone he was in so people didn't expect an immediate response. Easy cheap/free method of facilitating cross-border communications was at the heart of whatsapp from the start.