January Sees Over 3 Billion Texts Sent

The New Year enjoyed a strong start for text messaging, with over 3 billion texts sent during January 2006, according to the latest figures released by the Mobile Data Association (MDA).

Person-to-person texts sent across the UK GSM network operators last month saw a healthy increase of almost 25% on the total sent during the same period in 2005, with an average of 100 million messages now being sent per day.

January’s total received an added boost with a massive 165 million messages sent on New Years Day, while Valentines Day saw a total of 120 million messages sent, exceeding the MDA’s prediction of 105 million messages issued earlier this month and is an increase of 28 million on 2005’s total.

According to the MDA, a total of 32 billion person to person text messages were sent during 2005, with 2006 is set to be another significant year for texting. The MDA predicts that 36.5 billion messages will be sent during the year, an average of 100 million messages per day.

January’s strong growth continues on from December, which saw a total of 3.1 billion messages sent across the UK’s mobile networks during December, averaging 100 million per day (see December Continues 2005’s Record Breaking Text Trend).

The MDA attributes December’s record figure, at least in part, to festive mobile phone sales. The measurement body claims that handset recipients would be “eager to use the text function to send seasonal greetings.” The figures support this theory, with an average of 7 million messages sent every hour throughout the 25th December.

Mobile Data Association: 01922 419600 www.mda-mobiledata.org