Way back, when evleaks had leaked the Asha 500 press image(the same one that got announced today), one icon that stood out was that of Whatsapp. The most awaited app on the platform is finally revealed as coming next month with all the new Asha devices announced today at the Nokia World. And yes, it will be coming to the only Asha SW platform based device on the market today too, the Asha 501. I have been personally holding up on recommending the Asha 501 due to the lack of Whatsapp and now it’s a huge sigh of relief that it’s finally here, at least by the next month.
In an interesting stats release, Whatsapp CEO Jan Koum who came up on stage noted that there are now 350 million active monthly users on its platform, and out of them 250,000 Nokia users are being registered daily through their Asha, Symbian and Lumia devices. The company also said that Nokia and Whatsapp were both involved in the same philosophy of Connecting People and it was glad to work with Nokia on bringing Whatsapp to the Asha 501 and the others.
Building on the momentum of a total of 26 million app downloads on the Nokia store for the Asha 501, Whatsapp looks like a great addition to the store, and is obviously now not going to be a deal breaker when buying an Asha device. That said, even after the launch of BBM, the Whatsapp momentum isn’t going to stop, so we will be back reporting to you when the app goes live on the Nokia Store. Till then hang on and take a look at the rest of our Nokia World coverage.