The Short Code Marketing Opportunity (PDF; 5.1 MB)
Source: The Nielsen Company

As of Q3 2008, 203 million of the 263 million U.S. wireless subscriber lines paid for text messaging either as part of a package or on a transaction-basis. From a penetration and usage perspective, The Nielsen Company estimates that 57 percent of all mobile subscribers ages 13 and older use text messaging on a regular basis. Text messaging has become so popular, in fact, that U.S. mobile subscribers now send and receive more text messages in a month than they make phone calls.

Nielsen recently reported that as of Q2 2008, mobile subscribers sent or received an average of 357 text messages per month, compared with placing 204 phone calls. That’s not to say that a good old fashioned phone call has become less popular—that average has stayed fairly consistent over the past two years (from 216, on average, in Q2 2006)—but the average number of text messages sent or received has increased 351 percent, from 79 text messages sent or received, on average, in Q2 2006.

Demographically speaking, teenagers average the greatest number of text messages sent or received, at 1,742 messages per month in Q2 2008. Still, even a typical U.S. mobile subscriber between the ages of 35 and 44 will now send or receive more text messages, on average, than make phone calls.

This goes to say that text messaging has embedded itself in the American communication lifestyle. For that matter, texting has been an important part of the mobile experience internationally as well. Nielsen’s most recent estimates for text message use in 12 countries show that, while 53 percent of American mobile subscribers send text messages each month, texting is even more ubiquitous in countries such as Italy and China.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Business and economics, Social and cultural issues, Technology, Telecommunications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.