zlacker

Granted, I'm not in the UK, but Germany's market is somewhat similar regarding pricing etc. Not even my mother uses SMS, most people use either WhatsApp or Telegram, with some Threema and Signal mixed in.

Apparently Germany has ~8bn SMS for 160m contracts (don't ask me why there's an average of two contracts per person), which is like 50 a year. Edit: that number seems to include automated messages.

>>luckyl+(OP)
Apparently, after removing M2M-SIMs (smart-home, card-terminals, etc.) you end up with 107m active SIM cards.

That seems reasonable: Company-issued phones, LTE-Routers, some undercounting of M2M, and gerneral churn (I changed provider so I had 2 SIM-cards this year).