Free Mobile Chat Apps Slowly Overcoming SMS
Highly popular mobile chat apps for smartphones are slowly replacing traditional SMS text messaging.
The Next Web describes the results of Informa research suggesting that while SMS messaging is by no means dying (usage continues to grow), it is being replaced by free mobile messaging apps. Eventually, the assumption is that SMS will disappear altogether, but the continued increase in usage numbers means that this will not happen for quite some time. At the same time, free mobile messaging already exceeds SMS usage and the gap between them is only expected to grow.
The continued usefulness of SMS can be attributed to its universal availability and the fact that the majority of mobile phones in use today remain “dumb phones.”