The internet messaging has outnumbered SMS messaging for the
first time in its 20-year history, the research firm Informa has found.
Thanks to BlackBerry’s flagship messaging service –
BlackBerry Messenger – the users of Apple and Google Smartphones can soon send
messages over an internet connection free of cost and avoid the fees charged by
the telephone carriers.
Informa reports that the popularity of instant messages
surpassed SMS messages for the first time last year and it is likely to be
doubled by the end of 2013. The report states that 19 billion instant messages
were sent in 2012 compared with 17.6 billion SMS messages.
The firm predicted that the Smartphone users will send 41
billion instant messages this year and this figure will grow to 50 billion by
the end of next year. On the other hand, the phone users will send only 21
billion in 2014.
SMS service, which was first added to Nokia phones in 1993,
remained the standard method for sending short text messages between the phones
for two decades. However, in recent years it has met challenges from free
instant message applications such as Apple IMessage and WhatsApp.
The reason for increasing popularity of these instant
messaging tools is that their potential is not limited to text trade between
phones and they allow the users to send group messages and share videos and
photos as well.
Recently, BlackBerry has announced that it is planning to
expand the BBM service to Android and iOS devices this summer, a move which may
prove to eliminate SMS which has already seen significant decreases in use.
The company said BBM service currently has over 60 million
monthly active users and more than 10 billion instant messages are sent every
day.
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