Text Continues To Shine In June

The text messaging phenomenon continued to grow in June, with an average of 55 million person to person text messages sent across the four UK GSM networks per day, according to statistics from the Mobile Data Association (MDA).

The latest figure represents a solid increase on June 2002, when an average of 45 million text messages were sent per day and a big leap from June 2001 when an average of 30 million messages were sent daily.

The statistics reflect previous summer slowdowns and seasonal trends, but take the cumulative total of text messages for 2003 to 10 billion, against a 12 month MDA forecast for the year of 20 billion.

Commenting on the figures, Mike Short, Chairman of the MDA, said: “Text messaging is continuing to rise in popularity and diversity. As well as person to person text messaging we are seeing an increase in interactive text with programmes such as Big Brother, Fame Academy and Pop Idol providing people with the opportunity to vote via a short code across all networks.”

The popularity of interactive text was highlighted by last Friday’s Big Brother eviction, when over 1.4 million votes were cast, 27.5% of which were made via text.

The MDA recently unveiled a common code of practice for premium rate SMS services that use short codes from mobile networks (see MDA Announces Common Short Codes For Mobiles).

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

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