Countries where telecom competition lead to unlimited sms early enough and/or iPhone/iMessage adoption meant people weren’t motivated to install third party apps. The US and to a lesser extend the UK are the only countries I’m aware of this happening? But the UK plans added unlimited sms later and so WhatsApp has >50% market penetration there unlike the US.
(responding to both) France. We've had unlimited SMS plans since what, 2005? It's been a guaranteed solid 10-15+ years nobody thinks that SMS used to be a paid-per-unit (whether you got a package or not) thing.
Sure people use a variety of messenger apps, Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat. Since you don't have a guarantee that any one person is using this or that the default messaging app (Messages on iOS, whatever it is on Android) SMS is the safest bet that always works. That's typically what people use when they get someone 's contact: hand over phone, ask to type number in focused input field, send $firstname SMS; bam, handshake done.
> WhatsApp has >50% market penetration there
Lots of people here have WhatsApp. Doesn't mean it's their go-to, they still don't ditch SMS[0] nor dunk on "green bubbles". And then if both parties have an iPhone it just so happens that they obliviously converse over iMessage as a side effect.
[0] Except for group chats. But then they just create groups in whatever's at hand, which may or may not be WhatsApp. And that's mostly because SMS group messaging is thoroughly broken (as in it works more like email than IRC and people want the latter). But for 1:1? SMS is brutally consistent.
Apps like Whatsapp provide (a) groups, (b) picture messages, (c) end-to-end encryption, (d) very low spam rate and (e) free messaging, even internationally.
So there's often motivation to install your country's dominant messaging app beyond just the cost of SMS.
it’s a very real friction to install a third party app and ensure the people you want to talk to install it too, when all you really want to do is send short texts and images.
