Comment on Why does most of the world use WhatsApp as their messaging app rather than RCS/SMS?
Steve@communick.news 2 weeks ago
Wile texting in the US went free relatively early on, much of the rest of the world continued to charge for every text message. So data based instant messaging apps became very popular everywhere in the world that’s not the US.
jaygray91@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
Basically this. tl;dr: being free and being first exposure to mobile instant messenger.
in my south east Asian country, back then we did have bundle sms pricing, buy when the mobile internet infrastructure was getting big money from governments, WhatsApp came in at the right moment. advertising them being free (with a minimal $1 or something lifetime fee nobody bothered to pay for) and can do texting and sending images for free. compared to paying bundled prices for sms and MMS, it’s just a no-brainer.