Just after Apple announced iMessage app in iOS 5, it appears that Google has its own Android messaging client in the works, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The paper didn’t have any additional details on Google’s messaging app, but just like iMesssage, it’s reportedly being positioned as an answer to Research in Motion’s popular BlackBerry Messenger app.
Google’s new messaging app could fall under the Google Talk name, but it will need to do much more than that service, which is based on the Jabber IM protocol. IM is less convenient for mobile devices since it requires a steady data connection to remain logged in. To function as a texting replacement, Google needs to make sure its messaging app can accurately tell users when messages are sent, delivered and read.
For consumers, these new apps will offer faster and cheaper integrated ways to message friends. But the outlook is less rosy for carriers, who will likely see their lucrative text messaging revenue take a major dip. The messaging apps will move texting-like activity into cellular data networks and out of carrier’s aging SMS networks.
Consumers currently pay anywhere from 20 cents per text to $20 a month for unlimited texting on SMS networks. Most of that money is pure profit for the carriers: a dollar of SMS charges can produce around 80 cents of profit, while carriers only see around 35 cents of profit from a dollar of data or voice fees, analysts at UBS tell the WSJ.
Read more: Mobile Beat
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