Social messaging apps are threatening SMS. $13.9 bn revenue lost in 2011

Text message now got a problem. It isn’t twitter but the seemingly innocuous social messaging apps which are the new rage for mobile makers. Social messaging apps like Whatsapp, Blackberry messenger and Facebook chat has costed $13.9 bn in lost revenue for mobile operators. This is discovered in a report by Ovum. The study discounts the new revenues gained by the data usage by these same smartphones.

First it was Blackberry messenger which had the messenger option. Then WhatsApp stormed the app world with its cross platform messaging solution. After which almost all the major players have introduced their chat apps. Apple has introduced its iMessage to be not left out of the game. Samsung has its app called ChatON. While Blackberry messenger and iMessage are platform specific, WhatsApp and Facebook have wider adoption.

Samsung which started out as an Samsung only app has extended to popular platforms Android and iOS. KakaoTalk is another popular cross-platform messaging service which is quite popular. Of course there’s always Skype which has bolstered its portfolio with GroupMe, a group messaging app.

With cheap smartphones rising and every one developing their apps for Android platform, SMS doesn’t seem to be the most popular way to send text messages anymore. But there’s still hope.

Another survey, carried out in June 2011 by YouGov, showed that the huge majority of smartphone users – 81% – still considered SMS the key way to send messages on a mobile.

81% sounds about true because there are still a lot of feature phones out there which use SMS as the only medium and apps is still an alien concept. That could soon change if the Android deluge continues. Feature phones is already a dying breed. Looks like we need to add SMS to the list.

Do Indian operators have to worry about this new finding?

Via BBC