Facebook’s ambitions aren’t limited to messaging, the company wants to dominate voice communication as well, and it’s certainly off to a good start. According to Mark Zuckerberg, voice calls through Facebook Messenger account 10% of all VoIP calls in the world, meaning the company is already encroaching on Skype’s territory. Messenger is already dominant in America, while Facebook-owned WhatsApp dominates pretty much everywhere else, it’s just China that Facebook is struggling with.
Facebook Messenger wants to replace the telephone, not just SMS, and its on its way. Messenger now makes up 10% of global Voice Over IP calls, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during today’s Q1 2015 earnings call. Considering Facebook only fully rolled out free VOIP calling to Messenger last April, it’s already becoming a legitimate competitor to apps like Skype. And just yesterday it began rolling out free VOIP calls to WhatsApp on iOS after bringing the feature to Android last month. Meanwhile, Messenger is still exploding as a text message alternative. Its 600 million monthly users now send an average of 45 billion messages per day. At this rate, messaging is beginning to look like a Facebook-dominated game outside of China. With Messenger popular in the US and WhatsApp winning in Europe and the developing world, it’s only China where Facebook can’t operate that another service, WeChat, is on top in a major market.