Samsung plans to shut down ChatOn, retires Fitness with Gear app
According to recent reports, Samsung's market share and profits are slowly going down across multiple markets, including the Android tablets and handsets sector. This happens mainly due to tough competition in China from cheaper brands such as Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi. The company is now planning major management changes, but they also aim to discontinue various services and apps.
The first target is the ChatOn instant messaging service, currently present in over 120 countries and multiple platforms, including Android, Windows Phone, Windows 8, iOS, or the Web. According to a Samsung official quoted by The Korea Times, "From a business point of view, ChatOn isn't a business that can show improvement in the future."
ChatOn will be updated for service users before the shutdown, revealed another official. Samsung still has to announce the shutdown date of this service, so ChatOn remains available for now.
Samsung introduced the S Health app with Galaxy S4 and added Fitness with Gear to allow Gear devices to sync with smartphones running older versions of S Health. This happened because various handsets were stuck with certain S Health versions - 2.5 for S4 and 3.5 for Note 4, for example.
The company finally updated S Health for Galaxy S4 and other similar devices and retired Fitness with Gear. Now all compatible handsets can run version 3.5.1 of the software and sync with Gear and other devices. Unfortunately, the updated app does not handle heart rate and stress level measurement for now. Users can manually update S Health or leave their handsets perform the update automatically.