A large part of today's consumer communication in Germany occurs via Internet-based services. By 2015, more than half of all messages were sent via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, Threema, Signal and many other OTT services, and about a fifth of calls were also made via these services. While the shares changed only slightly in 2016, there was a sharp increase in the relevance of OTT services for communications of German consumers in 2017. About three quarters of the messages and a good quarter of the calls happened on WhatsApp and similar services.
What are the reasons for this increase? And what makes OTT services so successful? Are we entering a world without SMS and traditional mobile or landline calls? The present study addresses these questions.
A representative survey of 2,036 consumers in Germany was conducted for the study in cooperation with the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences. In order to be able to interpret these results better, we draw on findings from interviews as well as from research papers already published by us.
The study is available for download.
