At its F8 developer conference, Facebook today announced that it is launching its Portal video chat hardware internationally by bringing it to Canada and a select number of European countries, too. This roll-out will begin in June for $199 and $349, depending on the screen size. The company did not announce international pricing.
Portal originally only launched in the U.S. for As the company’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted during his F8 keynote today, the service has done better than the company expected. Given that it launched right during some of Facebook’s biggest privacy scandals, that’s a bit of a surprise, though we don’t know what Facebook’s own expectations were, of course, or how many of the device it has sold.
In addition, Zuckerberg also announced that its WhatsApp messenger is also coming to Portal. That means end-to-end encrypted video chats are coming to Portal, something that should reduce some of the privacy concerns around the device. “Now, you can be sure that when you’re having conversations with your friends and family, everything says between you,” Zuckerberg said, though most current users probably hope that’s this has always been the case, even when using Portal without WhatsApp .
