Telefonica Suspends In-House Instant Messaging Application

Recently, Telefonica's innovation division, Telefonica Digital, posted a notice on its website stating that the rich communication application Tu Me launched by the company will be discontinued on September 8, at which time all user data will be deleted. The company emphasized that the focus of its next step will shift to Tu Go—an application not limited to use on smartphones—which Tu Me users can also register to use.

    2012 year 5 month, Telefonica Digital launched a new innovative communication service brand "TU" (TU is the Spanish word for "you"); at the same time, it launched the first "TU" brand product, Tu Me, which is a global free mobile App that combines multiple functions such as SMS, calling, voice messaging, photo sharing, and location information. Tu Me was the first product officially launched after the establishment of Telefonica Digital, and it was also the first product launched by Telefonica for global users. It is said that Tu Me gained over 250,000 active users in 111 countries within its first two months.

    TU series' second product, Tu Go, was launched early this year by Telefonica's UK mobile operator O2. Tu Go is a VoIP application that supports "Internet to Phone". Compared with similar VoIP products, Tu Go has two outstanding features: first, the mobile number used by the user becomes a personal number; as long as they are connected to the Internet, calls made from any terminal anywhere in the world will display that number; second, the user's VoIP call duration uses the minutes in the user's package, not a specially purchased paid VoIP duration.

    In recent years, Telefonica has been committed to innovation in the Internet field. Launching Tu Me to compete against OTT service providers was a major move, and later operators such as France's Orange also successively launched their own OTT-type instant messaging applications. But it cannot be denied that operators started too late in this area. Although operators broke through tradition to launch their own OTT-type applications, the functionality of their applications does not differ much from the OTT services that have already established themselves in the market. In contrast, operator applications are inferior to OTT applications in terms of flexibility, user-friendliness, and openness. Therefore, snatching users from existing applications is not easy. Telefonica's suspension of Tu Me is a typical case. According to reports, the biggest difference between Tu Me's upgrade, Tu Go, is that it is not limited to smartphone users, and it uses a single-number identification for users (identified by mobile phone number). This move will inevitably increase user stickiness within the mobile network and is another innovative attempt by Telefonica.