Here's two interesting statistics from the regulators of Spain and Germany on SMS volumes that completely point in the opposite direction: While the Spanish regulator reports quickly falling SMS volumes since 2008 (see here and here) the German regulator (see here) has reported continued increases year after year with a big increase of 30% in 2011 over 2010.
Very strange disparate behavior and I wonder what the reason for this is!? Perhaps there is no bulk SMS pricing in Spain (probably not)? The first link above points to a post that speculates that IP based messaging is to blame. Interesting hypothesis but no facts are given. So while I can imagine that this is a factor I don't think it's the only one because back in 2008 there was no IP based messaging system used by the masses. Mobile Internet access on mobile devices was still something for freaks…
It will be a few months until the report for 2012 from the German regulator will be available but I will surely have a close look at the SMS numbers and also at the growth in mobile data volumes in the past year (sorry, changing the subject now). Last year, the growth was actually slowing to a factor of 0.5, also contrary to what the media usually likes to report.
The SMS usage drop in Spain it’s easily understandable. Nowadays, everyone owns a data plan in such a way that “Whatsapp” application has reached a decent level of ubiquity. In fact, in the MNOs smartphones advertisement you can even see many times the detail: “Whatsapp Compliant!”.
I guess that the profit that comes from the contract itself compensates the SMS loss. A standard data packet goes around 20€ allowing volume that goes from 500MB to 1GB per month. The standard “Whatsapp” user spends around 1/10 of his allowance at the end of the month. So there is clearly a huge gap between the cost and the gain.
It’s the reinvention of the standard business models.