It was bound to happen. This morning, analysts at Informa released a study that shows IP-based platforms such as WhatsApp now carry more messages than SMS infrastructure does.
Informa says 2012 saw nearly 19 billion messages sent over these apps each day around the world, versus 17.6 billion SMS messages. The analyst company believes the contrast will be even more apparent in 2014, with 21 billion text messages projected against almost 50 billion app-based messages.
Los Angeles industry analyst Paul Mueller tells this column that he isn't completely convinced by the study, but that chat apps will eventually overtake SMS messages. "There has been a huge emergence of dating apps that have chat features. People would rather chat with a potential date through these apps rather than give the other person their phone number, because the other person could end up being a psychopath."
On carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile, people can leave the chat apps open in the background and not have to worry about data consumption. It definitely appears that traditional SMS messaging is become less relevant.
Twitter: @ddeino
via Examiner National Edition Gadgets & Tech Channel Articles http://www.examiner.com/article/chat-apps-have-surpassed-sms?cid=roadrunner