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Neven Mrgan: What iMessage did to my text-messaging usage

mrgan: 

Three months into iOS 5, I’m using a trivial quantity of text messages. I currently pay $10/month for up to 1000 messages. Assuming these bill at 20c/message (it varies depending on your plan, I’m told) I could cancel my messaging plan and end up paying less overall, even at that outrageous price. 

Neven has posted his SMS usage over the past year or so and you can see how rapid the drop off is when iOS 5 was released.

In the UK, we usually get stupid amounts of inclusive SMS with our mobile phone plans. I have the Three One Plan. I get 5000 free SMS messages a month, 5000 same network voice calls, and unlimited data (yes actual unlimited. I hit 1.8Gb the other month via the inclusive tethering). We also don’t pay to receive messages.

Here is my chart from the same time period.

Not really a massive correlation, but there is a distinct drop off after October, even so much as dropping my SMS usage by 75%.

Its more than clear to me that iMessage will replace SMS for all my iPhone using friends. And FaceTime has replaced Skype. I’m just waiting for the final piece of the puzzle, voice over 3G data, and then all I need from the carrier is a data pipe.