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Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

> (and millions of others worldwide)

Where else do SMS remain common?

At least here in Europe they've been relegated to automatic communications, like receiving 2-factor codes. No one uses them for messaging. I think the app of choice is different per country, but I haven't met any non American that's still used to SMS.

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That's simply untrue. Tens or hundreds of millions of people in Europe still use SMS, for messaging.

If you're trying to say X% of people under the age of Y tend to use WhatsApp(iMessage/IG/SC/Telegram/Signal) for messaging, then what are X and Y? and in which European countries (it varies).

Pretty much anyone communicating across platforms, iPhone to Android or the other way, is using SMS. As you say, it varies from country to country, but also from social circles.

Because SMS has been basically free for 20 years in some market, it's not something people felt a need to migrate away from.

Tens or hundreds of millions of people in Europe still use SMS, for messaging?

I doubt that:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/mni2bx/sms_vs_me...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412598

At least in my country (Spain), it is not at all age related. No one uses sms for communication. I just checked a local source and Whatsapp usage is 97% among the young lowering to 87% among the 70+ group, with the practical totality of the others choosing just calls or no phone usage.

If you know a European country where SMS are the norm, can you share which one? As I said, I don't know a single one, but they might exist.

To be fair, when I said "millions of others worldwide" I was making a (pretty safe) assumption. As the default messaging service on every phone, and with literally billions of phones out there, it seems pretty likely that in the entire non-US world there are millions of people using it.

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