Samsung has launched a mobile instant messaging tool. Dubbed ChatON, the new free service supports the sharing of text, images, hand-written notes and videos across any mobile phone.
Users can also chat in groups, while a Web client allows content and conversations between mobile and PC to be shared easily.
All of the photos and videos in each instant messaging window can be seen in an automatically-generated content sharing “trunk.”
“With ChatON, Samsung has vastly simplified mobile communication by allowing users to connect to our upcoming feature phones and all major smartphones in the market,” said Samsung rep Ho Soo Lee.
“Users around the world can now enjoy easier and richer interactivity with whoever they want, in the format they want—this is mobile communication reinvented and democratized.”
ChatON will eventually be available on all major smartphones, tablets, notebook PCs and Samsung phones.
Although Samsung is throwing its hat into the same arena as Skype and Google Chat it does not seem if the company is really offering users any real reasons to switch to ChatON. Clearly, Samsung is definitely trying to gain a competitive edge by reaching out to a wider audience of mobile device owners. And while the ability to share across multiple plaforms and between feature handsets and smartphones is nice, Skype and Google Chat already do that well – at least on smartphones.
So will this turn out to be a waste of coding effort for Samsung? Only time will tell.
Can you think of any reason that you’d switch Samsung’s ChatON if you already use Skype or Google Chat?
