OTT messaging traffic has overtaken SMS traffic and will reach a volume twice that of SMS by the end of this year, according to a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media. The market researcher estimates that over-the-top messaging apps averaged 19.1 billion messages per day in 2012, versus an average 17.6 billion daily SMS. The OTT services are expected to grow to 41 billion messages per day by the end of this year, while SMS will reach an average 19.5 billion messaging. While there are still far more SMS users, at an estimated 3.5 billion in the world versus 586.3 million OTT messaging users, the SMS users send fewer messages, at an average five per day, versus 32.6 daily messages among users of OTT services.
Informa estimates it took OTT services just five years to overtake SMS, going back to the launch of BlackBerry Messenger in 2007. However, SMS is far from dead, and texting traffic is forecast to continue to grow through 2016. This is due to the still limited base of OTT messaging users, the need to communicate with users not on OTT messaging communities, and growing use of SMS by enterprises.
