Looks
like my prediction of Texting Taking over Voice back in 2003 as documented in
my blog
article entitled “Telecom
Providers and SMS - The Dead Zone” is slowly coming to
an end. Oh well, so much for my dream of Texting being the new BB Messenger of
Feature phones!
On
Thursday May 2nd 2013, the CTIA released some stats that indicated for the
first time that Texting in the US of A, more formally called SMS (Short
Messaging Service), decline by 5% from 2.3 trillion Tests in 2011 to 2.19
trillion in 2012 as reported in “Are
Americans getting tired of Texting?”, published May 2,
2013 6:44 PM PDT by Dara Kerr, CNET
News.
The Full CTIA Report on SMS
and IM can be seen using this link.
The
graph below illustrates this astonishing declined well, as albeit 5% is small,
it’s significant as it the first time in four (4) years that Texting has shown
a decline. Worse, with the spread of 4G Mobile and the coming of lower cost
smartphones as predicted in my blog
article entitled “Analyst
IDC States First Quarter of 2013 Smartphones Shipments finally overtake Feature
Phones - Sub-US$200 Iron Man 3 Smartphones for Developed World Markets”,
the decline is expected to get steeper by 2014.
The
reason for the decline?
The
rise of Instant Messaging services now being used in lieu of Talking and
Texting! This is being precipitated by more countries light up their 4G
Networks and more persons being to switch from Feature phones to smartphones
with Data Plans to save money as noted by Analyst Informa in the article “Chat app now more popular than SMS
Worldwide”, published April 29, 2013 5:22 AM PDT by Don
Reisinger, CNET News.
Informa
Stats indicated that the following IM Apps on smartphones were doing more of
the heavy lifting in communication Worldwide, taking over from SMS:
1. WhatsApp
2. BlackBerry
Messenger
3. Viber
4. Nimbuzz
5. Apple's
iMessage
6. KakaoTalk
This
seem quite the thing, with WhatsApp leading the pack beating Twitter’s impressive
200 million users a month according to statements by WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum at the AllThingsD's Mobile Conference on Tuesday
April 16th 2013 in the article “WhatsApp
CEO: We're Bigger than Twitter's 200M users”, published April 16, 2013 8:26
AM PDT by Roger Cheng, CNET
News.
Twitter,
if you may remember, hit the 200 million monthly use mark in December 2012 as
stated in “Twitter surpasses 200M active monthly
users”, published December 18, 2012 7:37 AM PST by
Jonathan Skillings, CNET News. So for WhatsApp’s CEO to make this
statement some four (4) months later in April 2013, they must be really
clocking some serious Traffic on their soon-to-be-US$0.99-a-year Service.
WhatsApp
furthermore got a boost from Nokia with a dedicated WhatsApp Button being
placed on the ASHA line of smartphones as stated in Kelroy’s Geezam blog
article entitled “New Nokia Asha
210 features a dedicated WhatsApp Button”. It’s not the concept
that of interest, as I’ve seen this before with Facebook having a dedicated
button on the HTC ChaCha, the HTC Salsa and the HTC Status. This of course
turned out to be a failure as documented in my Geezam blog
article entitled “How to add
Emoticons to your Facebook posts”.
Rather,
it’s Nokia’s recognition of the fact that WhatsApp is driving their Mobile
Phone sales as it takes advantage of the trend among Millennials [ages 18 to
28] to have relatively low cost smartphones on a two (2) year Plan with Data
Plans being used for IM and VoIP Calling.
Furthermore,
Informa estimated that in 2012 all across the globe in countries where 3G and
4G Networks are installed and Subscribers have smartphones:
1. 19
billion IM were sent each day
2. 17.6
billion SMS messages were sent each day
The
study, which was originally commissioned by the Financial Times as reported in “Mobile
data is growing, but voice & sms slowing”, published
April 29, 2012 - 9:02 PM PDT By Om Malik, Gigaom
also made a shocking projection for 2013 and beyond:
1. 50
billion IM were sent each day
2. 21
billion SMS messages were sent each day
This
seems fair, actually, as it meshes well with Analyst IDC’s Global numbers that
indicate more smartphones are being shipped and used in Developing World
countries currently deploying 3G and 4G Wireless Broadband Networks as stated in
my blog
article entitled “Analyst
IDC States First Quarter of 2013 Smartphones Shipments finally overtake Feature
Phones - Sub-US$200 Iron Man 3 Smartphones for Developed World Markets”.
More
unlimited plans in the US as more smartphone users take on Date Plans but
eschew Voice Plans in their 2 year packages. The Millennials [ages 18 to 28] prefer
to use the VoIP in many of these IM Service or Social Networks such as Facebook
or Twitter for Voice. As such, to encourage more Talking, Texting Bundles will
decline in price, which will spur a renaissance of sorts in Texting. By then
the death of Texting would have set in the US of A Telecoms Market, as Social
Network and IM Apps fill the gap.
Combined
with the lowering of the cost of smartphones as recommended by the ABI Research
data as stated in my blog
article entitled “Analyst
IDC States First Quarter of 2013 Smartphones Shipments finally overtake Feature
Phones - Sub-US$200 Iron Man 3 Smartphones for Developed World Markets”
this decline in Text message usage is expected to accelerate both in the US and
Globally.
Telecom
Providers are slowly losing the last Big Cash Cow of the Voice Telecom Era:
Texting. WhatsApp’s now Top
Gun (1986) as The Dead Zone (1983)
leads Star
Trek Into the Darkness (2013).
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