I think it depends a lot on the country you are in. In many European countries, the SMS is practically dead: in Germany or Switzerland it's all WhatsApp these days, with a bit of Telegram or Signal mixed in. Given this, I was surprised to discover how many people are still sending SMS here in Canada.

I think it has a lot do with mobile carrier pricing: here in Canada, mobile fees are enormously expensive, but SMS are almost always included for free. In Germany/Switzerland, many people use prepaid cards where SMS are (still) charged per message.

In Portugal all carriers have had free sms between all carriera for a few years now on almost all plans. I believe people still reasonably use it. Mobile data cannot be assumed to be always on as it is too expensive most of the time and never forget that having mobile data on drains battery too fast. If anyone wants to be sure to that someone replies to something in urgent matter better use standard sms/phone calls. I havr no idea in what kind of bubbles people are mostly nowadays. Anyway, almost everyone has whatsup or telgram too and most people also use those as a main way to communicate and mostly to be in chat groups. I'm the weird one using only sms and signal and very little of facebook messenger.

Head on over to Europe, and:

> Ik steur je wel even een appje

(I'll send you an message on WhatsApp)

is the norm in The Netherlands. My entire family, extended family, and everyone around them is all on WhatsApp. While I communicate with iMessage/SMS with friends in the US, that's not the case outside of the US. Everyone seems to have WhatsApp, most people don't use Google hangouts or other services alongside that, let alone SMS.

i am curious, where does it say "whatsapp" in dutch? you don't use international names?

"appje" is the diminuitive form of "app", which is a shortened form of "whatsapp" (referring to a whatsapp message).

In English, you would never shorten the phrase "I'll send you a whatsapp" to "I'll send you an app" because the word "app" would be confused with a mobile app.

The Dutch still use the word "app" to mean a mobile app; "appje" means a whatsapp. So the diminuitive form allows them to disambiguate.

The -je suffix in Dutch is commonly used and means 'small'. 'app' is used here as an alias for WhatsApp.

I'm also Dutch but I think 'app' is more like an alias for any chat service. WhatsApp is indeed huge though. Texting is basically dead in Europe afaict.

WhatsApp is huge in Brazil, even businesses now offer a WhatsApp number for contact. Maybe that's a by-product of Apple devices being too expensive here.

SMS is mainly used for bank alerts, confirmation codes, advertisement and scammers. I personally haven't used SMS for conversation in years.