{"id":129338,"date":"2015-06-15T15:23:35","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T13:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=129338"},"modified":"2015-06-15T15:27:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T13:27:16","slug":"rip-sms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/129338-rip-sms.html","title":{"rendered":"RIP SMS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom has released its financial results for the year ended 31 March 2015, which showed that the number of SMS messages sent on its network plummeted over the last year.<\/p>\n<p>According to Vodacom\u2019s latest figures, its South African subscribers sent 4.4 billion SMSs over the last twelve months &#8211; down from 5.8 billion a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>SMS volumes are now the lowest in nearly a decade, which is a sign of how instant messaging has impacted the mobile messaging market.<\/p>\n<p>While SMS volumes decline, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat traffic has skyrocketed in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>These platforms have taken over from SMS as the mobile messaging service of choice for many cellular users in the country.<\/p>\n<p>The following graph shows the decline in Vodacom\u2019s SMS volumes in recent years.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_129340\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Vodacom-SMS-volume.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-129340\" class=\"size-full wp-image-129340\" src=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Vodacom-SMS-volume.jpg\" alt=\"Vodacom SMS volume\" width=\"600\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-129340\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vodacom SMS volume<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The Vodacom SMS volume graph looks similar to the WhatsApp vs SMS graph from Portio research, below, which illustrates the rise of WhatsApp and the decline of SMS.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_123008\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/WhatsApp-vs-SMS.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-123008\" class=\"size-full wp-image-123008\" src=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/WhatsApp-vs-SMS.gif\" alt=\"WhatsApp vs SMS\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-123008\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">WhatsApp vs SMS<\/p><\/div>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on SMS<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/124168-free-twitter-sms-service-from-mtn.html\">Free Twitter SMS service from MTN<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/122972-whatsapp-killing-sms-but-too-early-for-funeral-arrangements.html\">WhatsApp killing SMS, but too early for funeral arrangements<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom\u2019s latest numbers show a drastic decline in SMS volumes, which comes at a time when instant messaging is skyrocketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":122974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[8887,35,203,41,18945,2594],"class_list":["post-129338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-facebook-messenger","tag-headline","tag-sms","tag-vodacom","tag-wechat","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129356,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129338\/revisions\/129356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}