The web will carry 160 trillion messages a year by 2019
A new report form Juniper Research forecasts that before the end of the decade consumers around the world will be sending and receiving a combined 438 billion messages every single day.
Currently 94.2 trillion messages, be they email, SMS, instant messaging or via social networks, are sent and received annually and the bulk of that is via email -- 35 trillion messages in 12 months. However, 80% of that total is technically spam.
By the end of 2015 instant messaging via apps like Line and WeChat will have overtaken email in the same way that they're already replacing the SMS text message, responsible for 43 trillion messages.
WhatsApp alone already handles 30 billion messages every day and that figure is expected to grow extensively as the decade draws to a close.
Consumers will be happy that as email becomes less important, spam will flow into their inboxes less frequently.
However, the humble SMS text message isn't dead yet. For the moment at least it's still more secure than many alternatives for verification and notification messages, such as two-factor authentication codes for web mail and other password-protected online services and accounts.
