Facebook-owned messaging platform, WhatsApp, on Thursday, introduced voice and video calling features on its app’s desktop.
WhatsApp, in a statement, said: “We’re excited to announce that private and secure one-to-one voice and video calls are now available on WhatsApp’s desktop app.
“Throughout the last year we’ve seen significant increases in people calling one another on WhatsApp, often for long conversations.
“Last New Year’s Eve, we broke the record for the most calls ever made in a single day with 1.4 billion voice and video calls.
“With so many people still apart from their loved ones, and adjusting to new ways of working, we want conversations on WhatsApp to feel as close to in-person as possible, regardless of where you are in the world or the tech you’re using.
“Answering on a bigger screen makes it easier to work with colleagues, see your family more clearly on a bigger canvas, or free up your hands to move around a room while talking.
“To make desktop calling more useful, we made sure it works seamlessly for both portrait and landscape orientation appears in a resizable standalone window on your computer screen, and is set to be always on top so you never lose your video chats in a browser tab or stack of open windows.”
The move to facilitate calls over large screens put WhatsApp on par with video-conferencing bigwigs Zoom and Google Meet, but it is unclear if it has ambitions to compete with the two in the enterprise space.
With over two billion users globally, WhatsApp is second only to its parent firm Facebook Inc’s namesake app, yet it is largely used for personal calls, unlike Zoom or Google Meet.