Whatsapp is preinstalled on every phone you buy here (including iPhones, AFAIK, but maybe that’s a sync thing? I don’t know, I haven’t seen an iPhone in ages). So it’s pretty comparable these days.
For what it’s worth, the timeline shift isn’t just due to the SMS pricing changes. I think the general introduction of mobile telephony was also pretty staggered. I remember US-based media depicting the idea of a teen having long SMS conversations before I or anybody I knew had a feature phone. MSN dominance wasn’t caused by expensive text messaging, it predates text messaging altogether, at least for mainstream users.
SMS is definitely a solid fallback for emergency services, though. It definitely retains use, even if it’s mostly notifications from governments and companies.
I meant MSN still being dominant even after cellphones offered the capacity to chat via text. WhatsApp was introduced in 2009, the first iPhone was introduced to the market two years prior, that’s a whole lot of time where text communication on cellphones was done via SMS.
Whatsapp is preinstalled on every phone you buy here (including iPhones, AFAIK, but maybe that’s a sync thing? I don’t know, I haven’t seen an iPhone in ages). So it’s pretty comparable these days.
For what it’s worth, the timeline shift isn’t just due to the SMS pricing changes. I think the general introduction of mobile telephony was also pretty staggered. I remember US-based media depicting the idea of a teen having long SMS conversations before I or anybody I knew had a feature phone. MSN dominance wasn’t caused by expensive text messaging, it predates text messaging altogether, at least for mainstream users.
SMS is definitely a solid fallback for emergency services, though. It definitely retains use, even if it’s mostly notifications from governments and companies.
I meant MSN still being dominant even after cellphones offered the capacity to chat via text. WhatsApp was introduced in 2009, the first iPhone was introduced to the market two years prior, that’s a whole lot of time where text communication on cellphones was done via SMS.