A group of students from the University of Jos are set to take the Instant Messaging market by storm with new app, Qbee Chat.
When it comes to instant messaging, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger are currently market leaders, with billions of users worldwide. Qbee Chat wants to contend with these two, and tons of other messaging apps.
Courageous, I must say.
For the founders, Abel Alabi, Emmanuel Alabi and Allen Brown-Eke, who recently won $5000 at the just concluded Next Economy Crowdfunding Bootcamp held in Jos, they are confident that Qbee Chat has what it takes to compete with the likes of Whatsapp.
In an interview, Emmanuel Alabi revealed that the platform has a number of features that do not exist in other IM apps. In his words, “we plan on taking over the IM market as a whole”.
The Whatsapp Features of Qbee Chat
Just like Whatsapp, on Qbee Chat, you’re able to:
- Chat with contacts who are saved on your mobile, and registered on the app.
- Make calls
- Use emojis
- Form group chats
Qbee Chat’s Unique Features
– Number of Members in Group Chats
Unlike Whatsapp and other messaging apps, Qbee chat groups has a maximum of 10,000 members per group.
– Channels
Channels can be created for broadcasting messages to an unlimited number of subscribers. Channels can be publicly available with an alias and a permanent URL so anyone can join. Users who join a channel can see the entire message history.
– Stickers
Stickers are cloud-based, high-definition images intended to provide more expressive emoji. When typing in an emoji, the user is offered to send the respective sticker instead. Stickers come in collections called “sets”, and multiple stickers can be offered for one emoji.
– Secret Chat
Messages can also be sent with client-to-client encryption in so-called secret chats. These messages are encrypted with the service’s MTP protocol.
This is a bold one, and even though it won’t be easy for the Qbee Chat to compete with Whatsapp on a global scale, with its features, it has a potential of being able to hijack a fair amount of the Nigerian market in the short term.
