China’s SMS service utilization is slowing down

SMS utilization is slowing down in China and this decline has been attributed to the cheap alternatives provided by the Internet-based messaging services such as Tencent’s WeChat.

Sina Weibo, Chinese microblogging platform, has also an effect on the SMS utilization. Services like Apple’s iMessage have also taken the place of SMS.

According to the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), 878.8 billion text messages were sent in China in 2011 and that number showed a slight increase to 897.3 billion text messages last year, i.e. 2.1% of annual increase, where as the wireless service penetration grew by 9% to 82.6% as reported by Sina Tech.

There are about 1.1 billion mobile subscribers in China. 760 million of those mobile subscribers use SMS and many of them belong to the young community. China saw 10% growth in the China’s overall internet population and nearly 75% of them are on mobile devices.