60 billion messages a day: that’s the really impressive number of messages sent through WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Exactly three times the global volume of SMS messages, which is 20 billion (which, to be honest, are not a few). Actually these figures aren’t completely unexpected, but they are remarkable indeed.

The popularity of instant messaging apps around the world is increasing every day for several reasons. First of all they are cheaper and faster (you simply need an internet connection) than SMS, and especially much cheaper than phone calls, and, what’s more important, instant messaging apps allow users not only to send messages or to use voice call options, but they also allow users to share pictures, videos and now also documents.

One more time, we must admire the foresight of Mark Zuckerberg, chairman, chief executive, and co-founder of Facebook, who has understood well in advance the importance of these kind of services and consequently decided to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. Now WhatsApp has reached the incredible number of 1 billion monthly active users, followed immediately by Facebook with 900 million monthly users. And with all the improvements and new functions that are regularly added to these messaging  apps, we can safely imagine that the number of users will certainly grow in the near future.

Despite all the debates around the end-to-end encryption feature, or the competition with other instant messaging apps such as Viber or Telegram, WhatsApp is daily used by millions of people around the world not only for personal reasons. In fact, something like 330 million people use WhatsApp on a daily basis for business purposes.

Is it definitively the end of an era and the beginning of a new one? Many people think so. Telephone companies are not giving up but certainly they are struggling to survive to this fierce competition. So, what’s your favourite way to communicate: WhatsApp or SMS?