The percentage of WhatsApp users across countries: https://imgur.com/0Jz527h

It clearly shows that people in Europe, South America and Africa are huge users of WhatsApp and only 18% use it in the US.

MMS existed long before phones that had chat apps.

MMS was (is?) spectacularly expensive, I recall sending an MMS and it costing in the realm of £1.50 -> £2.00 per message, furthermore there was a maximum size to the attachment you could send with it (100k-200k?). These two alone made it a non-starter.

Sure it was exciting at first when the first 3G colour display phones with cameras were a thing, but the cost and size limits were prohibitive when proper smartphones came on the scene.

Yah, MMS is part of "unlimited text" in the US-- albeit the quality is garbage (1MB).

I remember MMS being both expensive but also often broken as each user had to set up a bunch of APN in his phone. And the image quality was crap.

I'm amazed it's still a thing in some port of the world.

Do unlimited SMS plans in Europe in general include unlimited MMS too? That's how it's worked in the U.S. for a very long time.

When people in America want to send pictures without both ends having iMessage, they either use MMS (aka "text it to me") or share them some other way.

Also in Latin America. Even though we have nice 4G text messages do take a while to get through, even if my speed test is high!

TelCos just prefer to use the Internet. And I agree.