I ran across this summary of a fascinating study that suggests that instant messaging is starting to take over from SMS among the younger crowd.

This goes along with a point I’ve been making about the different mobile markets, especially USA vs. Japan/Korea vs. Western Europe: these markets are structured differently, which results in their different uses. Voice calls are cheap in the US and we spend a lot of time driving, so we have strong voice demand. Western Europe had very expensive voice calls and Internet connections when SMS was young and cheap, and SMS took off there. Japan has long train rides in which talking is considered impolite, so non-voice is important; a very large chunk of iMode use is the equivalent to (but not actually) SMS.

One thing I find especially interesting about the above report is it was run by Orange: not a US operator at all. So this is not some hokey “Americans are addicted to IM” type finding. Tomi Ahonen who regularly reports on SMS statistics, including in the US. He regularly asserts that US SMS usage follows in lockstep with Europe, except with a 4 year delay. Is it possible that Europe will follow IM in lockstep with the US, except with some sort of delay? And what happens when they collide?

Original Source: Little Springs Design