Today, we had a chat with Shahnawaz Karim, Marketting Head,
Nimbuzz India on the topic ‘Chat Apps Going Social’ and some interesting facts were revealed. The Marketing Head said “Messaging is not just prude play
SMS replacement anymore and has moved to various levels of personalisation and innovation”. Indeed that is the case now, with
instant messenger platforms becoming better as the days go by, people want more personalisation’s here and these companies are delivering. This is not possible with boring old SMS’s.
However, there still will be takers for SMS, but the
IM apps will eat into its share to quite an extent. If we look at the Indian market, many of us use IM social apps as a quick alternative to SMS with add-ons. Moreover, one has to pay per SMS and on the other hand instant messaging apps such as Nimbuzz are completely free to use. Yes there is the cost of mobile internet connection involved here, which is negligible when compared to an SMS.
SMS’s have come of age and might just go down in the evolutionary cycle. IM apps have quickly become popular and are an easy, faster and cleaner way to send a message. Also you get multiple personalisation options, social media sharing facility and ability to search for friends via various platforms. Video chat has also become possible. As most smart phones are Wi-Fi enabled it does not cost much to the users to video chat or send a message and emoticon across.
