Not all that long ago, if you wanted to send someone a text message you would have done so through SMS. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that messaging apps such as WhatsApp have pretty much entirely supplanted SMS as the primary mode of text based communication among various users. Research conducted by eMarketer has predicted a 6% increase in the total number of messaging app users which would bring this number well past 3 billion, thereby indicating that almost half of the world’s population is currently using these kinds of apps.
There are ten countries in the world that have an excess of 90% messaging app usage rate amongst their citizens. These countries are Austria with 90.6%, the UK with 91%, Russia with 92.7%, Italy with 92.8%, Argentina with 93.9%, the Netherlands with 94.9%, China with 95.2%, Spain with 95.4%, Finland with 95.5% and Mexico which has the highest adoption rate since 96.4% of its citizens make use of messaging apps at one point or another.
The surprising thing is that the US ranks pretty low on this list since only about 60.4% of American citizens use messaging apps. This could be due to a stronger SMS infrastructure but it also indicates how tech companies are moving their focus away from the US and are turning to other countries instead. When you have a country like Mexico where almost everyone uses a messaging app, it makes a lot of sense for newer companies in this industry to try and target Mexico instead of the US since they would have a higher chance of gaining customers in the latter. The growth of messaging apps shows how interconnected the world is becoming even though the rate of growth slowed somewhat this year after reaching nearly 14% during the peak of the pandemic last year.
Read next: Where can you get the best value mobile data in the world?
There are ten countries in the world that have an excess of 90% messaging app usage rate amongst their citizens. These countries are Austria with 90.6%, the UK with 91%, Russia with 92.7%, Italy with 92.8%, Argentina with 93.9%, the Netherlands with 94.9%, China with 95.2%, Spain with 95.4%, Finland with 95.5% and Mexico which has the highest adoption rate since 96.4% of its citizens make use of messaging apps at one point or another.
The surprising thing is that the US ranks pretty low on this list since only about 60.4% of American citizens use messaging apps. This could be due to a stronger SMS infrastructure but it also indicates how tech companies are moving their focus away from the US and are turning to other countries instead. When you have a country like Mexico where almost everyone uses a messaging app, it makes a lot of sense for newer companies in this industry to try and target Mexico instead of the US since they would have a higher chance of gaining customers in the latter. The growth of messaging apps shows how interconnected the world is becoming even though the rate of growth slowed somewhat this year after reaching nearly 14% during the peak of the pandemic last year.
Read next: Where can you get the best value mobile data in the world?
