On Wednesday, CTIA – The Wireless Association released its Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey results for 2008.
According to the Survey, Americans sent over 1 Trillion text messages in 2008, almost triple the number (363 million) from 2007. That works out to roughly 3.5 billion txts per day, or almost 13 messages per wireless user (the survey reports that there are “more than 270 million wireless users” in the US) per day.
When you factor in the increasing popularity of smartphones (iPhone 3G, T-Mo G1, BlackBerry Storm, yadda, yadda), Twitter’s pop culture explosion, and the extra 15 million new wireless subscribers in ‘08, among other factors, all of a sudden 13/per doesn’t really seem all that staggering.
Even so, we’ve officially entered the Age of Trillions (stimulus package, anyone?). Gone are the days when Billions (yes, with a capital B) seemed unfathomable. But alas, I digress. Here are a few more fun facts:
[W]ireless revenues showed impressive year-to year gains, as wireless data service revenues for the year 2008 rose to more than $32 billion. This represents a 39% increase over 2007, when data revenues totaled $23.2 billion. Wireless data revenues for 2008 amounted to nearly 22% of all wireless service revenues, and represent what consumers spend on non-voice services.
Other highlights of the survey include: wireless customers using more than 2.2 trillion minutes in 2008, an increase of 100 billion minutes from 2007, and record-breaking six-month wireless service revenues of more than $75 billion with annual service revenues reaching $148 billion by year-end 2008.
I would like to thank my LG Rumor for helping me contribute atleast a couple thousand to that total.
I posted a blog piece the other day about Moore’s Law applying to mobile. This piece exceed’s that number in adoption. I think this is a direct result of the technology, usability improvements that have occurred. I also believe the mass introduction of QWERTY keyboards helps for older folks to adopt.
My blog piece on Moore’s Law can be found here. http://www.faminecity.com/my_weblog/2009/04/moores-law-applied-to-mobile.html
wow, that’s a surprisingly high number, considering the fact that texting/text messaging/sms or whatever you want to call it, did not take off in the US for years compared to other parts of the world (especially europe or asia). now it seems the U.S. overtook Europe … in comparison: Germans for example sent only 29 billion text messages in 2008 … –> http://www.techfieber.de/2009/04/03/zahl-des-tages-deutsche-senden-29-mrd-sms-im-jahr/
And 500 million were contributed from 12-16 year old girls whose only way of communicating is pretty much through text.
Should see some of the boners they pull when discussing econ. ,
Across the similarities in the way this modern girl figure was represented, each rendering in fact, the Modern Girl Around the World research agenda concluded, combined and reconfigured aesthetic elements drawn from disparate national, colonial and racial regimes to create a cosmopolitan look. ,