Text Messaging Continues To Rise In January

Text messaging reached an all time high in January, as 102 million messages were sent on New Year’s Day, according to the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association (MDA).

1.65 billion person to person text messages were sent across the four GSM networks during January. This figure brings the daily average to 53 million compared with 45 million in January 2002 and 30 million in January 2001.

The MDA is forecasting continued growth throughout the year and estimates over 20 billion text messages will be sent in 2003.

February is also expected to show another year on year rise for text messages, after 78 million messages of love were sent of Valentines Day (see UK To Declare Its Love Of Text On Valentine’s Day).

According to TeleCommunication Systems the success of the SMS phenomenon is paving the way for the emerging mobile advertising market, which is set to blossom with the advent of 3G technology (see NewsLine Column: Location, Location, Location!). As people are already used to receiving promotional material via their mobile phone, mobile advertising is destined to succeed.

However, advertising via text messages has proved to be fraught with problems, due to its intrusive nature and the IPA recently published a new set of guidelines on SMS marketing(see IPA Publishes New Guidelines On Mobile Marketing).

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

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