What are you talking about? I live in Sweden and tons of people (including me) does not have whatsapp and uses MMS as a protocol that works with everyone. Most people here have one or two other means of messaging but it is not the same type so MMS is the safe fall-back when unsure or if it fails.

that honestly surprises me, it isn't the case in the UK or any of the EU countries I visit ; I haven't seen or used an MMS for maybe 20+ years

it would be interesting to map MMS usage worldwide, maybe it's a more important feature than I thought

EDIT: correction, I actually tried MMS once or twice with a phone circa 2007-2008, just checked (so not quite 20 years)

Can confirm, never seen MMS used for anything but my service provider sending me notifications about voicemail. Everything and everybody else uses SMS.

SMS and MMS are completely integrated here in the US, you have no visibility into wether it's an MMS or SMS you're sending/receiving - it's just "messages" in my experience.

So if you take a smartphone photo, and send it to a phone number contact in a message, boom, you just sent an MMS.

A majority of random american public wouldn't recognize the MMS acronym, despite likely using it regularly.

sending "pics by SMS" is something people wouldn't even expect to work here in the UK in my experience (and it probably doesn't work for most of them, several networks/plans don't support them or bill them separately)

visiting the US back in the day I realised just how different the "phone culture" was, for instance there was such a thing like being charged for receiving calls (in ~2008) and drastically different coverage maps, etc - I have no idea how things are now over there

Basically it's the data plan that matters. The call time allotments are so large that they don't matter anymore.

Coverage is still an issue.

Group messages are also (usually) MMS.

if you say "group messages" here in the UK, everybody will assume you are talking about whatsapp, or blackberry messenger (before)

one of the reasons why I suspect MMS went completely unnoticed here in the UK is that Blackberry was extremely popular rather early, and then Android ate it

I don't think I've ever sent a single group message over MMS

I use a dumb phone in the UK and MMS no longer works on it, not that I ever used it much (but it did work not so long ago). I agree with the sentiment of your comment that the networks probably killed it. buuut...

> I haven't seen or used an MMS for maybe 20+

That's a bit of an exaggeration:

> The first MMS-capable phones were introduced around 2002 in conjunction with the first GSM network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service

You are right on both accounts.

I remember the model of the phone I used MMS last, but couldn't remember the exact year. Just looked the model up and I see it's not as old as I thought. It was about 12-13 years ago actually around 2007~2008.

I'm pretty certain I haven't even tried MMS in any other phone since. With blackberries I used their messenger, with Android I used various apps, never MMS. I still use plain SMS occasionally.

Could be à carrier configuration issue.

> MMS as a protocol that works with everyone

> MMS is the safe fall-back when unsure or if it fails.

Except when it isn't.

The mechanic who services my cars is the only person I know (since at least 15 yrs) who has this strange thing for MMS. He always tries to first contact me with MMS before calling me, and I've never received any of those, not even once.

I never really bothered, but the last time I checked (15 yrs ago), MMS required some additional setup.

So "MMS works for everyone" isn't really a thing

To be sure there is no misunderstanding: MMS (also pictures, images, video) or SMS (only text)? I checked my Android phone and it probably sends a MMS of I attach a picture to a message in the Messages app. First time I even noticed the icons to attach multimedia content. Never received one.

I used to work in a mobile operator (not Sweden) and MMS didn't have any usage worth talking about.

I also live in Sweden, and all pictures I send to my parents or grandparents are over MMS (the rest are on Facebook messenger or telegram). It is simply the most convenient way if you only have someone's phone number. Might be a cultural thing? I'm absolutely certain my usage of MMS is very common here.

It's probably a network effect. If enough people use them eventually everybody use them. I could be the only one among my friends to even know they exist.

My understanding is that the US got free unlimited texting long before Europe did -- so Europeans were still paying by the text when WhatsApp/etc arrived and they jumped on that, but since they weren't/aren't paying per text Americans were/are much less motivated to switch, so social inertia keeps MMS alive. This could be totally wrong though, my evidence is just from talking to European friends.

Sounds reasonable, something similar happened in Hispanic America, SMS was really expensive, so as soon as WhatsApp showed up everyone jumped to it. Actually I’ll bet WhatsApp was the main motivation to get a smartphone during those years.

It's the default messaging app on every phone everywhere so there's nothing to install or convert to (from MMS, which everyone is already using) and nothing to get everyone to agree on. It's kind of crap, but it works and is ubiquitous.

I'm kind of surprised it isn't still a thing in Europe. Did cell phones just not take off until the mid 2000s when there were other options available.. so MMS didn't have the inertia it has in the US? It is pretty ingrained here, for example all take out services use MMS to give you order status and, AFAIK, they don't support other messaging systems.

SMS does exist, it's just that mms that's weird for EU users. It used to be expensive and support was horrible. My current provider doesn't even support mms anymore.

Ok, that makes sense. MMS is more the default here and is used mostly instead, not exactly sure why. But SMS would work fine for most of the use cases.

It was the cost. It drove people away from SMS to IP protocol messaging systems which also had a better UX. SMS used to cost quite a lot.

> I'm really curious about the reason why MMS is a thing in North America

Everyone on almost every phone has MMS, no matter what else they might have. It's the common language.

Early adoption -> early cultural incumbency.

e.g. Mexico had cellphone penetration so low until recently that it got to skip the SMS/MMS era entirely.

You would have needed a certain critical cultural mass using MMS to still be using it in 2020.