Facebook Launches the Messenger Lite App for Emerging markets & Slower Smartphones

Facebook launched a stripped down version of its mobile application named the Facebook Lite. The application was developed for the markets with poor network connectivity or where the internet connections are comparatively slower. The app received a huge response and has now been downloaded over a million times from the Google Play Store. We believe that such applications get a good response in the markets like India.

Now that the Messenger app is a separate standalone service, the company has now decided to launch a stripped down version of its Messenger app, just like the main Facebook Lite application. As of now the company launched this application for the emerging markets on Monday and they hope that it will be further expanded to the international markets. And according to the company the expansion will happen quite soon i.e. within the next couple of months.

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The Messenger Lite application uses less data and is designed to work in areas with comparatively slower internet connections. This should essentially allow the users to use the application effectively without having to worry about any connectivity issues. And as of now the application will roll out in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela. Another main reason that they decided to launch a lightweight and basic version of messenger is that, still a huge number of people in these emerging markets are using the older Android devices, etc. which have less storage, memory and lower performing CPUs.

As a result, some of the heavy applications will not run the way it is intended to and will give poor user experience overall during thr usage. Also, the reason why these countries will get the Messenger app first is because they have a larger number of Messenger users than any other country in the region. But don’t worry as it is mentioned earlier, this app will eventually make way to other international markets as well. The company’s head of Messenger said that the company wants to make sure that the products are truly for everyone.

And as far as the iOS version of the app is concerned, we don’t have any word on that from the company. And the likelyhood of having an iOS version of the same seems to be quite less since Android OS is the king of the emerging markets since iOS devices are comparatively expensive. Moreover, the iOS devices should not have any issues whatsoever in running the basic Messenger app i.e. if you are on some of the latest OS version. With that being said, stay tuned for more info on this as we will update once we have more details on the same.

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