WhatsApp and iMessage – now more popular than text messaging

Last week Nokia unveiled the Asha 210 – the very first phone with a dedicated WhatsApp button. Now the FT has run a story claiming that chat apps like WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage are now more popular than text messaging.

It suggests that the network’s cash cow could be under serious threat. In case you haven’t heard or used it yet WhatsApp is a free messaging service for mobiles that effectively replaces text messaging. You can use the app to send text messages, along with images and more, and you don’t pay for them as the message is included in your data plan. As the FT puts it WhatsApp “has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines.

The FT (linked here) now says that there were more instant messages being sent daily by the end of last year than there were text messages. In terms of figures it reckons that 41bn app, based messages will be sent each day this year – that’s double the number of text messages.

WhatsApp’s Chief executive Jan Joum recently said that the firm has more active users than Twitter which claims more than 200 million people use its service at least once a month.