Chat app messaging overtakes SMS texts

According to research from Informa, instant messaging on chat apps has overtaken SMS text messaging for the first time ever.

In 2012, 19 billion chat app messages were sent each day compared with 17.6 billion SMS messages – singnaling a turning point for many mobile operators who generate huge revenues from text messaging.

Informa have said that some operators are already noticing a decline in messaging revenue, with separate research from Ovum reporting that more than £15 billion of SMS revenue was lost in 2012 as a result of the popularity of chat apps, such as Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp.

However, despite the rapid growth of chat app services, it is still thought that SMS will continue to play a key part in the mobile sector.

“There is a lot of life still in SMS,” said Pamela Clark-Dickson of Informa, before explaining that there are still a huge number of mobile users that only use feature phones which are unable to benefit from chat apps.

“They [feature phone users] don’t have mobile data plans, so there is an awfully big base of mobile phone users who are going to still find that SMS is the best messaging experience for them for a while,” she added.

It is expected that by 2014, 50 billion chat app messages will be sent every day, compared with just over 21 billion traditional text messages.

Despite this gap, SMS revenue is still expected to reach figures nearing £82 billion by 2016.