Samsung is shutting down its ChatOn messenger service by the 1st of February in all markets except for the US, reports engadget. The company blamed ‘changing market conditions’ for the shutdown, despite having said last month, that the service will go on. Last year, Samsung had announced that it plans to add 13 Indian languages to its instant messaging service by the end of 2013, while claiming support for 10 Indian languages already, although we weren’t able to find any option to change the language on the Android app or the web app at that time. At the same time Samsung had also claimed that ChatOn has a global subscriber base of 100 million users, although a Strategy Analytics report from earlier this year pointed out most users used the app for an average of 0.1 minutes per month, indicating mostly accidental clicks. Comparatively, Galaxy S3 and S4 users used Google play store for an average of 74.8 minutes and 52.4 minutes per month respectively. Samsung had previously launched ChatON, with support Android, Apple’s iOS, RIM’s BlackBerry and Samsung’s own Bada OS, in addition to offering a web-client, for access on computers, in 2011. The company had said then that the app would allow users of feature phones to share text, pictures, calendar, contacts and emotions through an easy-to-access client, and smartphone users would get additional features like Interaction Rank and the ability to post comments on buddies’ profile pages. Interestingly, just last month, Facebook owned messaging app WhatsApp claimed…
