Pablo Picasso said, “Good artists copy, Great artists steal”.
Android and iOS are two different platforms where developers can promote their homemade application for the use of common people owning a smartphone. Application plays a key role in our daily lives depending upon our profession like students, parents, employees, gamers, vloggers etc. Among these different professions basic functionality of smartphones i.e. connectivity is the most important role. So there are 3 types of basic connection with the introduction of smartphones i.e. calling, texting and video calling. We use different applications for these basic functionalities and carefully chose our apps. In modern age, texting for passive and video calling for active connectivity are very much popular. Observing this popularity and public demand many developers have created their own version of apps and launched them on respective app stores.
In this battle of apps, an interesting news came out i.e. On 3rd and 9th July 2020, Jio Meet and Jio Chat were released respectively. The launch of both these apps made into the news headlines, mainly for being an exact copy of Zoom and WhatsApp.
This kind of news aren’t easily digestible especially when the developers are from top grossing IT company and can easily become part of jokes in conversations. We will be telling why this might be true and the reasons behind doing so being a giant business model in the world right now.
Jio Meet vs Zoom
Here are the key differences between Jio Meet and Zoom:
- Jio Meet app currently allows 100 participants in on a group video call which can last up to 24 hours with no restrictions, while Zoom allows only free unlimited one-to-one meetings, but for meetings of 3 people or more, the time is restricted to 40 minutes.
- Zoom has three paid plans according to the size of the enterprise. And as of now, there’s no news of Jio Meet for enterprise uses. So it would be safe to say that for small and medium-sized enterprises, Jio Meet wins easily, while Zoom is more flexible for large enterprises.
Jio Chat vs WhatsApp
The features and the UI/UX design of both Jio Chat and WhatsApp are the same, except for a few changes:
- There are exciting short video stories on the Jio Chat app which are specially curated for the user and are updated daily.
- You can chat with your favorite brands on Jio Chat. You can stay updated on news, astrology, travel, movies on the channels and get the best deals and customized offers from various channels across categories.
- You can create 5-member Conference Rooms on Jio Chat and enjoy video conferencing. The Conference Rooms stay there, so the users don’t have to create a room again for the same friends’ group.
Conclusion
The UI/UX design developed for Jio Meet is very much similar to Zoom. Similar phenomenon can be seen is in making of Jio Chat which has traits from WhatsApp. This allows a ton of flexibility when traffic from Zoom will shift to Jio Meet. By the time they install Jio Meet on their phones they already know how to use it. How cool is that? Now every application has copyright issues and you simply cannot copy and paste an app into play store. Also copying UI as a majority does not mean that total functionality of the application is same too.
So, has Jio made a master stroke or just made a fool out of itself in front of the whole world by copying the UI/UX of popular apps? Let’s find out.
- By cloning the popular apps Zoom and WhatsApp, Jio has provided a similar feature to the users of Jio Meet and Jio Chat. The new users of Jio Meet and Jio Chat, who have already used WhatsApp (it is the most popular instant messaging application) and Zoom, do not have to learn about the features of the app.
- Quickly capitalizing on the peoples’ emotions for “Made in India”. Designing an app from scratch takes a lot of time and a huge pool of developers. And the money spent on R&D to create a new UI is also saved here. It is easy to copy rather than develop from scratch to get the Indians using more of Jio Meet and Jio Chat. Indians will quickly switch to Jio apps rather than continuing on Zoom because it is “Made in India”.
- Free Publicity: By merely copying the designs of Zoom and WhatsApp, Jio has been constantly in the news. The triggering headlines will persuade the Jio subscribers to download Jio Chat and Jio Meet, especially when the latter is providing free services as compared to Zoom.
- Being completely made in India, Jio Meet and Jio Chat do not have the security issues of the calls being routed via servers in other countries. Also, this move is making India more ‘Atma Nirbhar’.
Judgemental Techies 