Credit: Amazon Anytime
Mobile messaging apps have come along way from the basic necessities of free mobile calling and texting services. Established mobile apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, Snapchat, Apple Messages and Skype, all offer key features like social networking, some type of free voice calling and mobile texting. But despite all these challengers, Amazon is allegedly and likely developing its own new messaging service dubbed Anytime, according to a new report from AFTV news, Amazon has been conducting surveys on what people want in their mobile messaging apps, and seems determined to deliver something new and full-featured to the market that gives people what they really want.
True to its name, versatility seems to be a big key for Anytime, as it is reported to be a standalone messaging app for PCs, tablets, smartphones and smart watches. Another key potential differentiator is that while while Amazon Anytime will offer essential features like chat with text and video, games and photo sharing, it will be integrated with other Amazon services like music, movies and shopping. Furthermore Amazon has recently added basic messaging and calling features to Alexa devices, which are a key complement to Amazon’s Echo hardware and voice assistant. Branching off and greatly enhancing these messaging and call features as a robust new app that integrates with Alexa devices is a smart strategy of modularization often employed for efficiency.
Chances are if the rumors of Anytime are true, which seems likely they probably are not building the messaging app from scratch. Amazon’s AWS division released a fully-managed communications service called Chime in February 2017, that includes both chat, voice and videoconferencing features. Chime was built out from the November 2016 acquisition of Biba, a San Francisco headquartered company that offered chat, video and audio conferencing products for businesses.
