Apple made quite a few attention-grabbing announcements during its recent Developers Conference. For starters, it introduced a plethora of new features for its wide variety of products. The tech giant made sure to give the required attention to health and privacy. But the undisputed highlight of the conference was the focus put on features that enable people to engage with each other.
One of the best examples of the aforementioned features is SharePlay. For those of you unaware, SharePlay helps users connect via FaceTime so they can stream videos or listen to music together.
As for FaceTime, Apple made a groundbreaking announcement stating that Android and Windows users will be allowed to join FaceTime calls on the web. This announcement may very well be the factor that paves the way for FaceTime to become a direct competitor of leading video chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Zoom.
It’s worth mentioning that FaceTime is already the second most popular messaging/video chat platform in the US (behind Facebook Messenger), as per the findings from Statista’s Global Consumer Survey. Over 1,000 US internet users aged between 18 and 64 years took part in the said survey.
However, allowing non-Apple users to become a part of FaceTime calls would definitely help in boosting the app’s reach, mainly outside the US since FaceTime isn’t too popular in the non-US markets, at least for now.
According to Statista, after Messenger and FaceTime, Zoom (34 percent), Snapchat (28 percent) and WhatsApp (25 percent) are also among the top 5 most used chat apps in the U.S. Take a look at below chart for more insights:
Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/25030/popular-messaging-and-video-chat-apps-in-the-us/
One of the best examples of the aforementioned features is SharePlay. For those of you unaware, SharePlay helps users connect via FaceTime so they can stream videos or listen to music together.
As for FaceTime, Apple made a groundbreaking announcement stating that Android and Windows users will be allowed to join FaceTime calls on the web. This announcement may very well be the factor that paves the way for FaceTime to become a direct competitor of leading video chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Zoom.
It’s worth mentioning that FaceTime is already the second most popular messaging/video chat platform in the US (behind Facebook Messenger), as per the findings from Statista’s Global Consumer Survey. Over 1,000 US internet users aged between 18 and 64 years took part in the said survey.
However, allowing non-Apple users to become a part of FaceTime calls would definitely help in boosting the app’s reach, mainly outside the US since FaceTime isn’t too popular in the non-US markets, at least for now.
According to Statista, after Messenger and FaceTime, Zoom (34 percent), Snapchat (28 percent) and WhatsApp (25 percent) are also among the top 5 most used chat apps in the U.S. Take a look at below chart for more insights:
Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/25030/popular-messaging-and-video-chat-apps-in-the-us/
