Record 4 Billion Texts Sent In December

There were over 4 billion text messages sent in the UK during December 2006, according to figures announced today by the Mobile Data Association (MDA).

It is the first time that text messages have broken through the 4 billion mark, and this huge total takes the overall figure for 2006 to 41.8 billion, beating the MDA’s prediction of 40 billion and giving a daily average for the year of 114 million.

The MDA says that person-to-person texts sent across the UK GSM network operators throughout the last month of the year show a growth of 38% on the December 2005 figure of 3.1 billion, and represent an average of 138 million messages per day.

On Christmas Day this leapt to 205 million texts, an average of 8 million per hour, with the figure for New Year’s Day 2007 even higher reaching a record breaking 214 million, the highest daily total ever recorded by the MDA.

The MDA has forecast that figures will continue to rise this year to deliver an annual total of 45 billion text messages for 2007, with an average of 3.75 billion messages being sent per month and 123 million messages per day.

In December, the MDA released the first UK picture message figures, showing that 88 Million were sent in the third quarter of 2006 (see First UK Picture Message Figures Show 88 Million Sent In Q3)

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