According to a report in Forbes, text messaging rates in pioneer texting markets like Finland and Hong Kong are on the decline. Christmas Eve text messaging, one of the biggest days for sending messages on Finnish carrier Sonera, dropped from 10.9 million in 2010 to 8.5 million in 2011. A similar 14% decline was observed in Hong Kong on Christmas Day. The Forbes article blames social networks like Twitter and Facebook for this reduction.
This trend isn’t occurring overseas. It’s also happening here in the US thanks to iMessage. Neven Mrgan posted recent messaging stats to a Tumblr blog that shows a steep decline in messaging rates after iOS 5 introduced iMessage. The month before iMessage was officially launched Mrgan’s sent over 700 messages; three months later that number dropped to under 100.
iMessage lets iPhone owner send text messages to other iPhones using Apple’s servers instead of the carrier’s wireless network. iMessage is especially easy to use because the service, when turned on, lets you use the Messages app to send an iMessage. It’s the same app you use to send text messages, so you don’t have to do anything different to send an iMessage instead of a text message. You type your message, and the iPhone will use iMessage if the recipient has an iPhone or text messaging if he or she does not. If most of your friends use an iPhone, the reduction in your text messages may be dramatic.
[Via Forbes and Neven Mrgan]