The invention discloses a data message transmission method and apparatus. The method comprises the steps: a terminal acquiring N running application programs, wherein N is an integer greater than 0; and if there is an application program including a low-latency service in the N application programs, instructing a network device to schedule a data message of the terminal to be transmitted in a licensed frequency band. When it is determined that there is an application program including a low-latency service in the N running application programs, a terminal may instruct a network device to schedule a data message of the terminal to be transmitted in a licensed frequency band, thereby implementing the transmission of a data message of a low-latency service by means of a licensed frequency band. Since the resources in the licensed frequency band are uniformly scheduled by the network device instead of being used in a competitive manner, using the licensed frequency band to transmit the data message of the low-latency service can ensure the latency requirements of the low-latency service, thereby solving the problem of a high latency caused by performing data transmission by means of anunlicensed frequency band.