Telecom companies lose $32.5 billion worldwide as Whatsapp and texting apps gain popularity

WhatsApp and other texting apps will deprive telecoms of 32.5 billion dollars this year and the figure would jump to 54 billion dollars by 2016, according to researcher Ovum.

Telecom companies based in the U.S. often provide unlimited texting as a part of their data plans while outside U.S., telecom companies have charged users typically for using texting plans which is one of the prime reasons for the loss in revenue for these telecom companies.

According to the Mashable, analysts have estimated global annual revenues to reach 100 billion dollars through texting, which costs very little to the telecom companies in order to provide the service.

However, an analyst with Recon Analytics Roger Entner noted 2012 to be the first year that saw a decline in carrier-based messaging in the U.S. while in other nations it was as early as 2000 with the growth of Skype for wireless telecoms.

Alongwith Whatsapp there are many other apps like Line, Wechat, Apple's iMessage, etc. which are the reson behind the big loss that has affected the telecom service providers globally, the report added.