LAXlocal

LINE app for Japan and lots of Asia
WeChat for China and Asia

They both have the same problem of only being able to be on one mobile devise ,
at least I never found a way to do it !

tmiw

Yep, iMessage is the closest to a "standard" messaging app here. Being included on every Apple device definitely helps, since otherwise I'm not sure what kind of motivation there would be for most Americans to switch to something else. After all, it's almost unheard of to not have unlimited SMS/MMS now.

As for me, I have WhatsApp, but like with others, it was installed mainly because it's the standard in the last few countries I've been to. In fact, it's so widely used in Mexico that cell plans there tend to have much larger data allotments for it vs. normal internet.

GUWonder

Seems to be primarily SMS/MMS, and then iMessage for those with iPhones. Lots of various other niches and apps used, but it depends on with whom you are dealing and for what purpose and what devices they are on.. WhatsApp seems to cover most of my international-traveling American network, but for my American network that doesn’t really travel abroad, they are usually not on WhatsApp and they are also less likely to be on iPhones .... and so it is SMS/MMS kind of stuff unless the conversations migrate to something particular.

LordHamster

Believe me, I hate all things facebook. Don't even have an account, and refuse to install their stupid messenger app. That said... if I could message facebook messenger users from my whatsapp client, that would be a HUGE win for me.

I hate having to remember each user in my contact list's preferred messenger. Drives me insane.

Currently I have:

• Signal: For myself, my wife and a handful of my equally paranoid friends.
• Whatsapp: For family, friends and co-workers in europe, india, south america.
• SMS/MMS: for Random android users who refuse to use anything other than SMS
• iMessage: for many US based users... many of whom don't even realize they are using a data-based protocol as opposed to sms.
• Wechat: for friends/family in China. (Yes this is the exact opposite as Signal from a philosophy standpoint. )
• MS Teams: for work chats

I'm too old for Snapgram or insta-chat and the like.

lhrsfo

I use SMS/iMessage and WhatsApp exclusively. The great advantage of iMessage is that it operates seamlessly with SMS in that nobody knows it's operating differently and you don't have to think about it. But more and more people are switching to WhatsApp.

DYKWIA

Interesting... the only person I know who still uses SMS is my 79 year old mother!

LordHamster

But you are in the UK.

Cell technology and texting evolved differently and at a different time in the US than in Europe. When WhatsApp came out, I really poopooed it (mainly because I'm horrible at identifying trends and good ideas), because in the US almost everyone had unlimited domestic texting already. I didn't understand why I should download another app which only worked if I could convince all my friends to download another app. Furthermore, everyone I knew could already SMS as much as they wanted.

In Germany at the time, my cousins all were super-excited about whatsapp because they all had cheap data plans, but were being charged some obscene fee per text by the local phone provider. Whatsapp avoided that fee. I don't know about the UK, but I suspect a similar dynamic was at play.

Fast forward to the advent of iMessage.... the majority of US phone users are on iPhone, whereas Europe iPhone has much smaller market share... again due to the delayed "smartphone boom (not talking Nokia here)" in europe.

tmiw

Apparently Europe was using SMS way before the US was, if this is accurate. Granted, that was written in 2006 before the iPhone came out, but maybe unlimited SMS isn't the sole reason why Americans still use it instead of other apps.

gfunkdave

When I visited the UK in 2002, everyone was texting on the Tube. They would write all their texts and send them in bulk when the train went aboveground. At that time I had AT&T and they had just enabled SMS, but it only worked if you were texting other AT&T subscribers. I remember several friends were amazed when I showed them how you could send text messages instead of calling.

LordHamster

If you re-read what I wrote, I didn't say US had SMS before Europe. My focus was more on the pricing structure of SMS in the years between when iphone came out and when Whatsapp was released. Within the smartphone (iphone/android age) SMS was FREE on most US plans, while the majority of the Germans/Italians/French I personally knew were still using plans where texts were quite limited or costly. This is based on my own personal observations, I don't have any hard data beyond my circle of acquaintances to back up my assumptions... plus Europe is a very big place with the UK being very different from other parts as well, whereas plans in the US were much more homogenous by 2007 when iPhone came out.

LordHamster

I didn't write, nor did I mean to mistakenly imply... that Europe didn't have SMS early on. My focus is on what differentiated the two regions to make everyone in Europe abandon SMS and switch to WhatsApp. The only factor I can conceive of has to be the pricing structure of SMS in Europe vs the USA at the time.

stimpy

I remember using SMS a lot back in the 90's in Europe. According to Wiki SMS started in 1992 in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS

LordHamster

Fantastic, but the question at hand is WHY ,and When did you switch to WhatsApp? What made Whatsapp appealing to you in 2009 vs SMS which was fairly Ubiquitous. Only reasonI can come up with is price... were you being charged per sms in 2009?

Update: found this slightly spammy infographic (https://www.telemessage.com/why-is-w...e-infographic/)

and this: https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/news-...y-abroad-vs-us

Both supporting the pricing of SMS hypothesis.

stimpy

No, we had unlimited SMS in Europe back when Whatapp and the others began. I think the original driving force for OTT texting was from Europe to developing nations that had very expensive mobile service. Also within and between developing nations. The customers were mostly using WiFi in those places. And once that built up to a critical mass, SMS began to fall away. Although there are still many millions of SMS messages sent in Europe each day. I recall at one point, about 10-15 years ago, the SMS industry was larger than all of Hollywood (films, TV, music) put together in terms of revenue.

tmiw

There were a lot of shenanigans the US carriers were doing, too, that probably didn't help. For instance, restricting what apps could be on various phones (like how Google Wallet was Sprint-only on at least one phone). I'm not sure to what extent, if any, the European carriers did the same.