New research suggests by 2018 instant messages will account for 75 per cent of mobile messaging traffic but only two per cent of revenue, such is the difficulty of monetising the service.

Instant messages (IMs) are different to text messages (SMS) in that they are generally free apps that encourage multiple users to send multiple messages in group conversations.

Users generally send several ‘chats’ to convey a message they would send in just one SMS, said the report by Hampshire-based Juniper Research.

“Adoption of IM apps has rapidly accelerated over the past 18 months, something which has led Juniper to revise upwards our forecast for the volume of IM traffic,” said report author Sam Rowlands.

But the market is struggling to generate revenue from the technology with different companies trialling in-app purchases, games, advertising and premium subscriptions.

Others are used as loss leaders to generate traffic for bigger vehicles such as Facebook Messenger, it said.