It's probably a combination of high cost of texts at the time when Whatsapp became popular, no limit (or much larger limit) to the size of texts, a reasonable probability of texts not arriving or arriving late and a "fuck telcos for squeezing millions of euros from their users for no other reason than to turn massive profits from texting" attitude.
Soon was June 2017. But I doubt it has anything to do with roaming. Maybe more people paid per SMS for a longer time than in the US? I know I still do; I could add unlimited messages to my monthly contract for 1 EUR or so, but what's the point.
Interesting. My assumption was that Europe was much more okay with pay-per-use than the US was. It was always strange to someone in the US that a European would pay different amounts for a call depending on what kind of phone you were calling, where in the US both parties simply paid for their airtime if they wanted to use mobile phones.
SMS took off faster in Europe than in the US, but we've had bundled packages for so long that the individual cost per text wasn't such an issue, and now on many plans they're unlimited.
I guess the differing cost structure depending on who you're texting and from where may have spurred the adoption of WhatsApp, whereas in the US, even if you WERE paying per text, it was the same across a territory of many thousands of miles and hundreds of millions of people. And, the same way that many folks in the US do not even have a passport, they tend also not to have a reason to text internationally. The size and homogeneity of the country benefits the adoptions of some technologies, but hinders the adoption of others.
I don't know why this was downvoted, because absolutely this is why I started to use WhatsApp. Though the main problem is very high international SMS/call charges. I was in an international distance relationship a couple of years ago, and doing anything over cellular would have bankrupted me.
It is true that international texting is expensive in Europe, whereas inter-state texting is free in US. But while Americans usually have circles of friends spread over several states, an international circle of friends is less common in Europe.
I think the reason is that a typical cell phone plan in Europe was like 5€ per month, plus 0.07 cents per text (or call minute). Whereas typical American plan was $50 month, but unlimited free text and calls. So people who text lot didn't want to pay even for the tiny amounts for individual text messages, and migrated to using apps.
The all-inclusive fixed price monthly plans are only now getting more popular in Europe.
It's also because it's much easier sending photos and live recordings using whatsapp compared to any other app outhere (FB is too clunky, the rest of the apps don't have a critical mass in most of Europe.
That's even worse, because it makes it easier to correlate when two people are Whatsapping with each other. If they both happen to be online at the same time a lot...
