Shut up! Samsung’s ChatOn to be shut down after being overrun by messaging app rivals

Samsung revealed today that its messaging app, ChatOn, will shut up and shut down on February 1, 2015. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quotes the tech giant as saying that the closure is its reaction to “changing demands in the market,” and that the world’s top smartphone maker wants to focus more “on other areas such as health and mobile commerce.”

ChatOn – which is preinstalled on Samsung’s phones but is also available to anyone on Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Phone – hit 100 million registered users in September 2013, but Samsung never disclosed how many active users it had. Making the generous assumption that half of its registered users are active each month, ChatOn has only 50 million monthly active users (MAUs), way below the 170 million MAUs on Line, the 209 million on Viber, the 500 million on WeChat, or the 600 million-plus on WhatsApp.

The Korean firm targeted ChatOn at India, China, and the US, but mobile users in the two Asian giants had other ideas as Indians leapt on WhatsApp and China went nuts for WeChat.

The US seems to be the sole bright spot for ChatOn. Samsung clarified to Engadget today that ChatOn will remain open beyond February 1 only in the US.

See: Race to the top: the state of chat apps in 5 charts

(Source: Engadget)