Like I don’t get it. People use sms instead of using messaging apps that are cheaper. What is up? Is it that people don’t understand that messaging apps are cheaper than SMS? Or is it that people are not interested in messaging apps? Or is it that most phones in Africa are still not data enabled? Like what is the problem?
WhatsApp is very Very popular in Nigeria.
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Young man are you using Radar to complete research work for your final year project in a very very… very remote school? I find your questions fascinating and by all means keep asking them.
SMS’ traffic is highly inflated by the sheer number of marketers using it to sell their products/services, or invite people to events like weddings. Others who use it often do so because either they or the person they are trying to reach doesn’t have a smartphone. Like @sop_DDy said, whatsapp is popular in Nigeria.
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Very funny; @xolubi! #ResearchWork
@davidsmith8900 It’s true most peeps use SMS for political/event campaigns and product/service adverts.
However, one-on-one Instant Messaging has overtaken SMS texting and now outnumber texts.
Billions of messages are sent over the internet with apps every day, compared to texts.
As an Analysts, I expect the number to continue to rise, with billions of daily chat messages anticipated.
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Some people are used to SMS
I just returned from working with a few humanitech startups in East Africa - clean water and sanitation tech. Our target market were poor, and owned feature phones. We needed a way to capture interested customers, so built something using SMS and flash-to-opt-in, since that’s what that customer segment is used to. (I’ll be posting about the results of our experiments on my blog when we’re done.)
SMS has high open-rates for marketers
From a marketing perspective, is that SMS has extremely high open rates, so well-targeted SMS campaigns can give a good return on investment. The systems for Whatsapp marketing are also a bit difficult from what I’ve seen, though, Whatsapp is much better as a “contact us” marketing method than one-way spray.
Data requires a smartphone
I was also at MozCamp Uganda, and after went into an Orange shop on the outskirts of Nairobi to buy an Orange Klip running Firefox OS. The Klip is the cheapest smartphone available at around 4000 KSH. It’s priced to make smartphones available to people who can only afford feature phones. (The cheapest Android was 6k.) I asked a lot of questions about why people buy the Klip and how they decide. Interestingly, people are aware of Whatsapp, even if they’ve never used a smartphone.
People make irrational decisions about their data use, which limits new app uptake
Here’s a common pattern I learned from interviewing the founders of Suba who had a very interesting journey through African and US markets. For customers where data is prepay and limited, people tend to be swayed towards services they already use. Once they’ve decided that they’ll use Whatsapp, or Facebook, or Instagram on their phone, they don’t consider it again. In their minds, their data budget is allocated for those apps. The concept of another app, to them, means paying more for data, starting with the download cost of the app itself. Is it worth downloading? How much will my data cost be for that? How much more data will I need per month to use this app? Since this is usually a complex decision when framed this way, the easy answer is: I won’t bother. Which limits uptake in new apps.
PS. A lot of this I learned from interviews for the free course at The Sources. So if you want to learn more, please sign up! 
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Happy August n Happy Saturday Madam/Sir Sop_DDy. Thank you for this vital information but if WhatsApp is popular in Nigeria, why isn’t it popular in all other African countries? Y does SMS seem to be more popular in other African countries? Is it because their phones are not data-enabled?
Not really Mr. Xolubi. I just trying to understand why SMS is prevalent and why most Africans don’t use data/internet, when they are so cheap. Thank you for the encouragement and vital information as well Mr. Xolubi. Happy August n Happy Saturday.
Okay thank you Mr. MrASulaimaon. Happy August n Happy Saturday as well. I really appreciate your time and patience in confirming the information.
First of all Happy August n Happy Saturday Mr. SaintSal. I’ve looked at your blog (SaintSal.com) and I’ve signed up at The Sources. Secondly sir, I will like to thank you for making statements on why SMS is prevalent in Africa as well as giving critical backup details. I really do appreciate once again and I’ll be checking up on your blog and look forward to lessons from Entrepreneur’s Path.
From my research work at Coremobile, We realized that people are more concerned about passing on their information than the cost. Also, I realized that people use data message services because of the ability to share pictures easily. Cost is at the tail end of service adoption. If I say the Samsung galaxy S duos is a dual sim and is cheaper than the Iphones, how important would that be compared to the prestige which delivers more self gratification. So I think trusting a service is more important than the cost. I know that every SMS I send will be delivered regardless of the data conditions at the recipient end. Plus stats show that all SMS will be opened 90seconds from when they are received.
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Happy August & Happy Saturday Mr. Uduak. I will like to thank you first of all for taking the time and patience to answer my question. I feel you that people are more concerned about passing information than cost, but I will think money will come first or maybe because there is alot of options like email or im or sms or mms, I am more concerned about the money. Either way I get your point sir. Is there by any chance an online document/information/slideshow/website of where I can get more information about your research at Coremobile, if not it’s okay, Im still very grateful for the information you have provided me.
I don’t know man, I can only speak for Nigeria. There are so many android phones that cost less than 20,000 naira and their market share is increasing. If you live in Nigeria you would have observed a new marketing campaign picking up speed. The campaign is something called social bundles, so a person can pay a fixed fee and have unlimited access to messaging apps and a few social media sites. I think that shows the high penetration of messaging apps.
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Hello @davidsmith8900; I recommend you learn to rather make use of the ‘@’ sign to tag peeps.
Once you type @; followed by the first few alphabets of a persons username, the radar system will auto generate similar names to choose from.
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Hi David - where are you based? Are you currently outside of Africa? I only ask to better understand what context you might be familiar with, because like others on this thread have said, the vast majority of people I know use WhatsApp instead of SMS.
WhatsApp is extremely popular in urban areas in Ghana, especially in the capital, Accra. I’d go as far as saying fully 90% of SMS I receive in a month is annoying promotional material from my telco, and basically ALL my messaging happens on WhatsApp.
Important caveat is that my friend group might not representative of the average Ghanaian, so while it might appear to me that everyone uses WhatsApp, it’s possible that most people in more remote areas still communicate primarily through SMS. Two things make me suspect this is not the case.
I will say, though, that from conversations I’ve had with telco reps, I have the distinct impression that SMS volume in Ghana declines every year, and I suspect this is because more and more people are using messaging services such as WhatsApp and Viber.
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To note is that SMS wasn’t exactly serving the space instant messaging filed.
Cost and messaging format
Cost per 140 characters of text via SMS is ‘quantumly’ higher than via a messaging app and you could hardly organize a robust text conversation on any SMS app, no matter how fancy. IMs brought sexy to ‘texting’.
However, in Africa’s peculiar case SMS still has a standing userbase. SMS cost per fixed text makes it readily usable than IM which you have to subscribe to a data plan to send the same message.
Data still isn’t ‘cheap’ any where in Africa. But then cheap is relative.
For getting a fixed message across another mobile phone user. SMS is cheaper, but less robust.
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Happy Sunday & Happy August Mr. Quartey, You could’ve been doing anything else in the world but you decided to reply to my question, and I appreciate that. I will like to thank you for giving me an insight on what goes on in Ghana. I am currently based out of Africa sir. Sir, when you receive SMS, aren’t you charged for it, or are they free?
Thank you Mr. 87_chuks for your answer. I didn’t know that people had to subscribe to a data plan in order to send a message. I was looking at Airtel and other Nigerian Telecom Operators and they said that data was about 5 Kobo per kilobyte. I just thought that you used the data and get charged later. I didn’t know it was the other way around. But I get your point, Many people only want to send about 1-2 messages per day/month, rather than all the time.
At least I now know that those spam SMS aren’t a “Nigeria only” phenomenon…
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I strongly doubt this.
IM’s are only on internet enabled mobile phones.
The number of internet enabled mobile phones isn’t up to half of the entire base.
SMS is still king.
Take it from a guy who runs a VAS business.
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I concur strongly with your findings.
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