WhatsApp app for iPad: CEO Will Cathcart’s answer is largely as earlier – Times of India

WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart has the same message for all those waiting for an app of the instant messenger for iPad: “People have wanted an iPad app for a long time.We’d love to do it,” said Cathart during an interview to The Verge.
While the WhatsApp chief didn’t commit the app per se, he said that development of the app in near future is a possibility and that the company has built the underlying technology to build it.
Those who don’t know, WhatsApp native app has been long overdue for iPad just like the native Instagram app on iPad. But, till now, WhatsApp has been holding off the development of the native WhatsApp app for iPad.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that the WhatsApp CEO has mentioned the possibility of a WhatsApp app for iPad. In June 2021, during an interaction with WABeta, the website that tracks upcoming features and changes in WhatsApp, the company’s CEO said that rolling out the multi-device support will make it possible for the platform to build things like enabling WhatsApp on iPad. He added then that the public beta for the WhatsApp app on iOS has been closed for new members for the past two years and that could change soon. “We know people are eager to get into the beta. Let me ask the team if we can open the beta up to some more people soon,” he told WABeta.
The main reason behind iPad missing an as important as WhatsApp has been the lack of the ability to sync it across multiple devices without compromising on the safety and security of the data and privacy.
However, WhatsApp has recently developed a way to sync the data across the devices with encryption and data protection. Cathcart also said that “the underlying technology has been evolving, and WhatsApp has been hard at work to make this possible in the future”.
The WhatsApp CEO has referred to the newly added multi-device support feature in the interview and mentioned “Our web and our desktop apps now have that. If I have a multi-device on, I can turn my phone off or lose my network connection and still get messages on my desktop. That would be really important for a tablet app, to be able to use the app even if your phone isn’t on. So the underlying technology is there”.
Before the multi-device beta, the WhatsApp desktop and web client required users to keep their smartphones connected to the internet for them to work and receive and send messages. However, the new multi-device beta brings the ability to use WhatsApp on both desktop and web without the need of keeping the device turned on or connected to the internet. Which is an important factor for the tablet app to work, without this, the app would be practically useless.