SMS vs WhatsApp: how messaging apps have made messaging obsolete

SMS, which has just celebrated its 25th birthday, is now losing its popularity at the beginning of the year and the figures announced by French operators prove this. Bouygues Telecom, Orange and Free He just announced some clear statistics: texting is dying. Only orange subscribers are sent 94.5 million text messages 6% discount on New Year’s Eve. Same story in Bouygues, 45 million text messages posted and a 9.7% drop. Free Mobile recorded the smallest drop, with 4% fewer text messages than last year.

SMS vs WhatsApp: messaging apps killed the traditional New Year text message!

SMS usage has been in free fall in recent years. In 2012, 1 billion text messages were exchanged at the beginning of the year. by the way Our Parisian colleaguesThe French prefer to turn to social networks and instant messaging applications. Open twitter, instagram or FacebookThere are millions of messages to wish 2018 a happy new year. There are also many tweets to be surprised by the absence of SMS. On a personal level, it’s been many years since I’ve sent a single congratulatory SMS.

Figures released by operators confirm the rise of instant messaging apps and social networks. According to Bouygues Telecom, the French consumed 5 million gigabytes on 3G/4G New Year’s Eve! In fact, according to the operator, 60% of the volume used in 2018 is instant messaging applications. We can assume that the remaining 40% is predominantly devoted to social networks.

What’s up? It also confirms the rapid rise of the instant messaging application. Despite a major crash on New Year’s Eve, the messaging app managed to break its own record: more than 75 billion sent worldwide. That’s a huge performance for the Facebook-owned app. Last year alone, 63 million text messages were sent.

Also note its huge popularity. MMS. Orange subscribers sent 7.1 million MMS in the New Year: +8.63% increase compared to 2017. This increase is even more pronounced among Bouygues Telekom customers, with an increase of 13.5% to 3.39 million MMS.

These figures show that SMS has only a few years left. More practical, more interactive and more user-friendly instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp, facebook messenger Where Skype they are about to take his place. But the traditional text message hasn’t had the final word yet. In the coming years, SMS will be reborn under the name RCS, a brand new communication protocol developed by Google. which is closer to messaging apps RCS is the future of normal text message.