Carrier messaging downward trend continues

Text messaging over mobile carriers are going through tough times – in fact, for the first time in years, US text messaging actually went down in the third quarter of 2012, and this could very well be attributed mainly to services such as iMessage and Whatsapp. Mobile analyst Chetan Sharma claimed that mobile phone users sent an average of 678 texts per month, which is 18 fewer compared to the previous quarter. Granted, the change is not that large, but it does reflect a paradigm shift among smartphone users different services, including iMessage, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, as one needs not worry too much about the costs involved.

There are carriers like AT&T who intend to move with the times, and have decided to responded to data-based messaging programs with additional restrictions or perhaps even to introduce price hikes for the data. In fact, in July this year, AT&T actually altered their data plans to substantially raise rates for significant data users. Do you find yourself text messaging more often than before, or less, or have you completely moved on to platforms like Whatsapp?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: sms