"WhatsApp is worth more than what we paid to acquire it," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, defending his choice to proceed with one of the largest acquisitions in the history of the technology industry.
The popular online messaging, photo, video and audio file sharing application was purchased last week by Facebook for $19 billion.
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Mark Zuckerberg said the price he agreed to pay to acquire the app "was justified" because, with around 450 million users, "WhatsApp is one of the few services that could one day reach one billion users."
Earlier, WhatsApp announced that from the upcoming April it will provide the capability to conduct free phone calls through mobile phones.
To date, the app offers the ability to record and send instant voice messages, but not live conversations in the form of phone calls.
