[dtech]

SMS is cheap now but wasn't universally when Whatsapp gained critical mass.

Nowadays it's mostly about convenience and features compared to SMS, and iPhone has a much smaller marker share in Europe so iMessage isn't a thing.

[meling]

I beg to differ. iMessage is definitely quite common in Europe as well.

[dtech]

iPhone has like a 33% market share so I wouldn't call it common if you can't reach 2 out of 3 people on it at least.

In contrast, in many European countries Whatsapp has 90%+ penetration [1]. Even where it's relatively unused it's more common than iMessage.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-m...