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Wile SMS in the US went free relatively early on, much of the rest of the world continued to charge for every individual SMS message. So data based instant messaging apps became very popular everywhere in the world that’s not the US.
Basically this. tl;dr: being free and being first exposure to mobile instant messenger.
in my south east Asian country, back then we did have bundle sms pricing, buy when the mobile internet infrastructure was getting big money from governments, WhatsApp came in at the right moment. advertising them being free (with a minimal $1 or something lifetime fee nobody bothered to pay for) and can do texting and sending images for free. compared to paying bundled prices for sms and MMS, it’s just a no-brainer.