Facebook adds SMS support back to Facebook Messenger for Android after pulling it in 2012; SMS support is not currently planned for Messenger on iOS
Surround and conquer is Facebook's new strategy for getting people to switch from SMS to Messenger. You can now read and send old-school text messages …
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a loop that opened four years earlier: Facebook stripped SMS out of Messenger in 2012 when it split messaging into a standalone app, then quietly began testing SMS integration on Android this past February alongside multi-account support. Shipping it now, under a 'surround and conquer' banner, makes the play explicit — Messenger wants to sit on top of carrier texting so users never need a separate SMS app.
The asymmetry matters: Android gets the feature because it lets apps register as default SMS handlers; iOS offers no such hook, which is why Facebook says iOS isn't planned. The later arc of coverage — Facebook eventually testing Messenger back inside its main app and returning voice and video calling to Facebook itself by 2021 — frames this SMS move as one swing of a longer pendulum between standalone and integrated messaging.
First-order effects
- Android users can set Messenger as their default SMS handler, reading and sending carrier text messages alongside Messenger chats in one inbox; iOS users get nothing, since Apple doesn't expose an equivalent default-handler role.
Second-order effects
- Google's own Android messaging apps lose ground at exactly the point they were strongest — the default SMS slot — while carriers see their commodity text service increasingly rendered through a Facebook-owned client rather than a neutral dialer.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, messaging consolidates around whichever app controls the default entry points on each OS: Facebook absorbing SMS where Android permits it, and the eventual re-folding of Messenger features back into the main Facebook app pointing toward fewer, larger messaging surfaces rather than a constellation of standalone ones.
The trend: Messaging platforms are absorbing carrier SMS wherever the mobile OS lets them claim the default handler slot, turning open texting standards into on-ramps for proprietary networks.