One of the most popular smartphone apps in the world has finally come to the iPad. Today, Meta has officially released WhatsApp for iPad. The release comes nearly sixteen years after WhatsApp debuted on the iPhone, and went on to become the de facto messaging app for most of the world.
WhatsApp comes to the iPad
WhatsApp debuted on the iPhone in 2009, and within just five years, that messaging app had become so popular that Facebook (now Meta) announced in 2014 that it was acquiring it for a staggering $19 billion.
But the extraordinary sum Meta paid for WhatsApp seems to have been worth it. On Meta’s financial conference call on April 30, Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp now has 3 billion monthly active users worldwide. That’s a billion more than the app had just five years earlier in 2020, notes TechCrunch.
Outside of the United States and China, where Apple’s iMessage and Tencent’s WeChat respectively dominate the messaging app market, WhatsApp is the preferred communication app for the rest of the world.
It’s no wonder, then, that fans of the app have hoped it would come to Apple’s iPad since the tablet was introduced in 2010. Today, those hopes have finally been realized. Meta has now released an updated WhatsApp app on Apple’s App Store that runs natively on both the iPhone and iPad.
Based on the App Store listing images, WhatsApp for iPad supports many of the features of WhatsApp for iPhone, including messaging, calls, and app lock.
How to get WhatsApp for iPad
To get WhatsApp for iPad, go to the App Store on your iPad and search for WhatsApp. You’ll now see the app show up in your search results.
Simply click on the “Get” button to download the app (or the cloud download button if you previously downloaded the app to your iPhone).
WhatsApp will then install on your iPad, and you’ll be ready to chat on Apple’s tablet.
You can check out the App Store listing for WhatsApp for iPad here.
Surprisingly, Meta has launched WhatsApp for iPad with little fanfare. As of the time of this writing, Meta has not published any announcement that WhatsApp is now available on the iPad.
Even the release notes for the latest build of WhatsApp for iPhone don’t mention that the app now natively supports the iPad (Meta uses a single binary for the iPhone and iPad versions of the app).
The only public comment Meta has given about WhatsApp for iPad was in a post on X yesterday. The official WhatsApp account on X replied with an eye emoji to a comment suggesting that the app should be released on the iPad.
Regardless of the lack of fanfare from Meta, WhatsApp and iPad fans will be happy that 15 years after Apple’s tablet debuted, and 16 years after the app debuted, it’s now usable on the iPad.
The final deadline for Fast Company’s Brands That Matter Awards is Friday, May 30, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
