‘Samsung pulls plug from WhatsApp competitor’

Samsung is going to stop with its WhatsApp competitor ChatOn in the longer term. This is reported by a South Korean newspaper. The plug is not immediately removed from the chat service; instead, Samsung is said to plan to phase out the service slowly.

Samsung would have decided that the chat service will not make enough money in the future, the Korea Times writes on the basis of anonymous Samsung employees. As part of a plan to tackle non-profit divisions, it is said that the decision was made to pull the plug.

The app is being phased out by region. In some regions, the app will even be updated before it is taken offline. It is not known how long it will take to start phasing out the app and when the app will be taken completely offline.

At its peak, ChatOn had 100 million users, but last spring research showed that Samsung device users prefer Google services. An average user of a Galaxy device would spend six seconds within ChatOn per month. ChatOn is currently available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry phones.