Text Messaging Goes From Strength To Strength
The text messaging craze showed no signs of slowing in September with a total of 2.13 billion person to person texts being sent during the month, according to the latest research from the Mobile Data Association.
The figures reveal an impressive 23% year on year increase in the number of text messages sent across the UK’s four GSM operators, as the medium continued its development from a popular craze to an essential communications tool.
Text messaging has grown exponentially since the Mobile Data Association began reporting regular SMS statistics five years ago. Just 113 million texts were sent in September 1999, a figure which had leapt to 580 million by the following year and to more than a billion the year after that.
The Mobile Data Association will celebrate its tenth birthday later this week with a special gala dinner and award ceremony designed to mark its achievements over the last decade. The event will also recognise forward thinking companies and individuals for their contribution to the growth of the industry of the years.
Mike Short, chairman of the Mobile Data Association, said: “The MDA has much to celebrate after ten years of championing the use of mobile data, with annual WAP usage growth running at 109%, and a forecast of 25 billion text messages being sent during 2004, we can be very proud of our success so far.”
The Mobile Data Association was recently forced to revise its usage forecasts for the UK’s text messaging services after figures for the first seven months of the year revealed a staggering 15 billion messages had changed hands. The industry continued to grow over the summer with this year’s A Level and GCSE results boosting the annual total (see Text Message Forecasts Revised Following Massive Usage).
Mobile Data Association: 01922 419600 www.mda-mobiledata.org
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