South Africans have not completely abandoned the short message service (SMS) as revealed by research firm, World Wide Worx.

World Wide Worx, with the backing of First National Bank (FNB), on Tuesday released ‘The Mobility 2014 research study’, which revealed that over the last 18 months SMS spend in the country remained steady at 13% of respondents mobile phone usage spend.

Speaking at the presentation of the results, managing director of World Wide Worx, Arthur Goldstuck explained that SMS has been benefiting from the strength of the growing instant messaging culture in South Africa.

Goldstuck explained that more South Africans are turning to SMS rather than speaking over the phone.

But, despite SMS maintaining its popularity among mobile users in the country there has been a shift towards more usage of social and instant messaging (IM) applications compared to last year.

According to the report, there was an increase of 19% in the use of social messaging apps with mobile messaging application, WhatsApp, dominating the South African market.

The uptake of WhatsApp in the country more than doubled its penetration in the past 18 months, from 26% to 53%. This is the equivalent to 10 million users of the application in the country, according to the research report.

“While SMS remains pervasive, new communication channels are being opened up to the mass market through both social media and IM apps,” Goldstuck explained.

The Mobility 2014 research study looked at the use of mobile devices, internet and money in the country.

The fieldwork research was conducted by Dashboard Marketing Intelligence in late 2013 and is made up of face-to-face interviews with 1,200 respondents – 800 from urban areas and 400 from rural areas.