When using their smartphones, consumers are increasingly relying on chat services such as WhatsApp, Signal or Threema. In Germany, every resident will send an estimated 34 instant messaging messages a day this year, according to a market study by the Internet industry association VATM. A total of 2.83 billion of such chat messages would be sent via apps a day, five percent more than a year ago and more than twice as much as in 2018 (1.35 billion a day).
In the case of e -mails, the daily average per inhabitant of the study is 19. This number also increases, albeit slower than with chat messages – compared to 2024 this was an increase of almost three percent. Remarkable: In 2016, the number of emails and chat messages had been almost on the same way, but meanwhile much more instant messaging messages are sent than emails.
Hardly any sms
The good old short message SMS has a shadowy existence. Their shipment quantity is now so low that it no longer appears as a daily value in the VATM statistics, but only as a weekly value: a resident in Germany sends an average of 12 SMS and thus about half as much as 2021 (22 per week) and about a third of the year in 2016 (35 per week).
When will the last SMS be sent? Study author Andreas Walter from the consulting company Dialog Consult did not want to commit himself. The SMS still has advantages for certain applications, he said. “I can reach anyone I have the number from.” With WhatsApp & Co, however, the app must be installed. In addition, the reception of SMS could not be rejected, which is useful in the case of acknowledgment requirements, for example in banking.
Specialist Walter does not yet see the boom of the chat news. “This is a bit of a generation topic: Young people call less and send more messages, they send themselves more voice messages and no longer make calls together.» The voice messages are included in the number of instant messaging messages. “News can be short and scarce, you can send a lot of things a day – in the future there will be enormous increases.”
© DPA-Infocom, DPA: 250429-930-477465/1
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