Telephone companies are promoting voice mail as an alternative to the answering machine  By recording messages from callers when a subscriber does not have access to his or her telephone, voice mail provides a service similar to that of an answering machine
The companies promoting this service argue that it will soon make answering machines obsolete, since it is much more convenient, more flexible, and less expensive than an answering machine
The surge in sales of answering machines occurred shortly after they were first introduced to the electronics market.