5 Billion Text Messages sent/received each month in the US. Mobile Messaging continues to show enormous uptake in SMS and MMS.

The Wireless Association (CTIA) today announced at it’s semi-annual conference its semi-annual survey results. Mobile messaging continues to grow in both text messaging (SMS) and multi-media messaging (commonly referred to by some as picture messaging or MMS).

THE HIGHLIGHTS
SMS/ Text Messaging Stats:
According to the survey, text messaging (SMS) continues to grow at an unprecedented rate: more than 822 billion text messages sent and received on carriers’ networks during the last half of 2009—amounting to almost 5 billion messages per day at the end of the year. During the 2009 calendar year, there were more than 1.5 trillion text messages reported on carriers’ networks.

MMS / Multi-Media Messaging Stats:
Wireless subscribers are also sending more pictures and other multimedia messages with their mobile devices—more than 24.2 billion MMS messages were reported for the last half of 2009. That’s more than double the number from the previous year, when only 9.3 billion were reported for the last half of 2008 – a growth of over 250% year over year growth. The growth in messaging take up is also fueling mobile marketing growth and adoption of mobile marketing by companies of all sizes.

Device Growth & Increase Data Connection:
There are now more than 257 million data-capable devices in consumers’ hands in the US – up from 228MM at the end of 2008: 50 Million are smart phones or wireless-enabled PDAs and nearly 12 million are wireless-enabled laptops, notebooks or aircards.

As of December 2009, more than 285 million wireless connections. This represents a year-over-year increase of more than 15 million.

“With wireless connections now equal to more than 91 percent of the U.S. population, mobile broadband is pivotal to ensuring all Americans are ‘digitally literate’. CTIA’s survey results show the wireless ecosystem is constantly reinventing itself, and other industries, to be more productive and efficient” said Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA -The Wireless Association. “Mobile broadband will increasingly play a vital role in people’s lives.”

People Still Making Calls:
Other highlights included wireless customers using more than 1.12 trillion minutes in the last half of 2009, up 38 billion from the last half of 2008—and breaking down to 6.1 billion minutes-of-use per day. Wireless service revenues for the last half of 2009 amounted to almost $77 billion—up from a little more than $75 billion in the last half of 2008.

The CTIA Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey results were released at International CTIA WIRELESS 2010. For more survey information, please visit: http://www.ctia.org/advocacy/research/index.cfm/AID/10316

POSTED: March 23, 2010 (LIVE FROM CTIA)

March 23, 2010 in Blog   |   2 Comments

SMS & MMS Outlook Strong; Text Message Revenues Reaching $233B By 2014

Worldwide Messaging Revenues set to exceed USD 233 billion by 2014

According to a new research published by Portio Research called ‘Mobile Messaging Futures’ reveals that revenues for mobile messaging is expected to reach 233B By 2014. SMS and MMS usage continues to grow worldwide. The Mobile Messaging Futures report, focusing on the overall mobile messaging industry worldwide, indicates that in 2009 alone, the industry generated a $150 billion in revenue, with a projected $233 billion by 2014. The report also reveals that the use of the technology shows no signs of slowing down either.

Text Messaging remains a ubiquitous feature on all cell phones in use today. In 2009 alone, the report suggests, worldwide SMS traffic topped 5 trillion messages, and that figure is set to exceed 10 trillion in 2013.

MMS is ready to break out too in the coming months as carrier finish upgrades to their platforms and allow for interaction via short codes. Full year revenues for MMS in 2009 amount to almost USD 27 billion, an impressive figure, and lest people forget and not far off what SMS was generating a mere 5 years ago. MMS is growing fast in all major regions around the world as affordable camera-equipped handsets flood the market and increasingly become the norm. Read more on MMS here: MMS Messaging

QWASI MMS OUTLOOK: MMS will move mainstream as SMS has done over the last several years offering a true multimedia approach to messaging.

The uses of mobile messaging for business today for entertainment, mobile commerce, mobile coupons, mobile ticketing, mobile donations, mobile search, blasts, alerts and additional mobile marketing.

Read the entire report here: Worldwide Mobile Messaging 2010 Report

February 3, 2010 in Blog   |   No Comments

Mobile Marketing Center Lets Companies Reach On-The-Go Consumers In 2010

QWASI updates its integrated mobile marketing platform to provide superior mobile marketing services to its clients.

PHILADELPHIA, January 7, 2010 – QWASI Inc., one of the leading enterprise mobile marketing application companies providing interactive mobile solutions for the US mobile market and small and medium-sized businesses (the SMB market), announced today the official launch of the QWASI Mobile Marketing Center 2.0. With this release, it’s never been easier to build, manage and analyze mobile marketing campaigns through a self-managed online portal. Companies of any size can seize the opportunity of enterprise features that mobile marketing offers through the power of QWASI’s mobile marketing platform.

With twice as many users of SMS than email globally and over 125 billion text messages sent every month in the United States, 45% of brands have already deployed text messaging campaigns, with a projection of 89% planned to go to market by 2010. There has never been a more important time to engage customers via the mobile communication channel. QWASI is committed to helping clients and companies navigate effectively through the mobile landscape as they reach SMB consumers on-the-go. The QWASI Mobile Marketing Center 2.0 now provides its clients with the platform that will help to launch their campaigns into the mobile marketing space and realize the power of mobile.

QWASI provides its clients with a variety of key services designed to better promote marketing campaigns with mobile services. With the ability to quickly set up interactive text messaging and mobile campaigns from any browser, QWASI gives its clients the power to control their own interactive mobile marketing solutions.

The QWASI Mobile Marketing Center 2.0 provides such popular features and new services including:
• SMS Auto Responders (NEW): Power drip marketing via text messaging to opt-in users.
• Info-on-Demand: Providing information via custom Keywords. Capture opt-in users for future message blasts including email addresses (NEW).
• Blasts / Alerts: Send text messages to subscribers. Keep customers informed of promotions, offers & events.
• Mobile Coupons: Distribute coupons to potential customers who have opted-in to receive your promotions. Track usage with Promo Codes (NEW).
• Text-to-Win: Enable potential customers to text in a special keyword to instantly enter-to-win a prize.
• Text-to-Vote: Have interested customers text to vote on a topic and provide real-time results.
• Ringtones, Wallpapers & Mobile Video: Deliver rich content to customers with MMS and mobile downloads.
• Website Widget: Build a subscriber list from web-widgets .
• Custom Applications: The Marketing Center API allows companies to build any custom mobile messaging application.

“Many of our new features in this release have been in use for QWASI enterprise clients. We’re now making them available to small and medium size companies to leverage the mobile channel,” states David Geipel, COO and Co-Founder of QWASI, Inc. “We enable companies to power a simple mobile campaign and provide them with tools that connect companies with their customers. We’ve seen an insurgence of companies desiring to utilize a short code to power one-to-one mobile messaging. With the Mobile Marketing Center API, we’re also enabling other companies to power highly interactive campaigns using the same API our platform uses. QWASI has been providing successful and cost effective mobile campaigns for over 5 years.”

QWASI’s Mobile Marketing Center 2.0 also enables companies to white-label a powerful mobile marketing platform using a shared short code provisioned on wireless carriers including Alltel, AT&T, Boost, Centennial, Cellular One, Dobson, Immix, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, Virgin, Verizon and other second and third tier carriers. The platform provides companies the ability to give their clients access to further provide control over their marketing campaigns. In addition, the service can be connected using a dedicated short code (vanity or random).

ABOUT QWASI
QWASI, Inc, is a leading mobile solutions provider of interactive applications for clients across the US utilizing SMS (text messaging), MMS, WAP and iPhone applications, QWASI makes complexity to simple with mobile marketing, mCommerce (mobile commerce), private label mobile search tools, click-to-chat, click-to-text, Mobile IM (MIM) applications, interactive property marketing services and customized alerting for Fortune 1000 businesses.

QWASI CONTACT
Patricia Scanlon, QWASI, 877-747-9274, patricia.scanlon @ qwasi.com

January 7, 2010 in Press Releases   |   No Comments

Teens point the way to Texting Trends (averaging 2900 txt per month)

QWASI works with advertisers and brands of all sizes and demographics. However, when we first officially launched our services in the market place in 2005, we were immediately hit with the comment “who texts” or “my teenager sends a few each month” and most aged 35-54 claimed they didn’t use it or even know how to text. Now they are without excuse – because only the smallest population doesn’t text.

During the second quarter of 2008, a typical U.S. mobile subscriber placed or received 204 phone calls each month. In comparison, the average mobile customer sent or received 357 text messages per month — a 450% increase over the number of text messages circulated monthly during the same period in 2006. (Nielsen Mobile, September 2008)

Nielsen Mobile released a new study on “How Teens Use Media” and reveled new information on the rise of mobile usage for this demographic.

Here are some excerts from their study:

Of all the mobile behaviors of teens, texting is most talked about. Fingers fying and phone cameras fashing, 83% of U.S. mobile teens use text-messaging and 56% use MMS/picture messaging. The average U.S. mobile teen now sends or receives an average of 2,899 text-messages per month compared to 191 calls.

The average number of texts has gone up 566% in just two years, far surpassing the average number of calls, which has stayed nearly steady.

More than half of all U.S. teen mobile subscribers (66%) say they actually prefer text-messaging to calling. Thirty-four percent say it’s the reason they got their phone. Still, texting isn’t the only means of communicating with teens over the mobile phone. Teens are avid users of a wide variety of advanced mobile data features. More than a third of teens download ringtones, Instant Message or use the mobile Web, while about a quarter of U.S. teens download games and applications.

To a lesser extent, teens are using video messaging (26%), watching mobile video (18%) and using location-based services on their phone (16%). There is a popular notion that teens in the U.S., indeed U.S. subscribers at large, may be far behind subscribers in other markets in terms of mobile data use. In fact, U.S. teens have adopted mobile media more quickly than in many of the markets Nielsen tracks. Consider mobile Web: as of Q1 2009, 37% of U.S. mobile subscribers 13–17 accessed the Internet on their phone—this ranks U.S. teens second, behind 50% of China’s mobile teens, in terms of mobile Internet penetration. With all of this expanding mobile activity, schools and parents are stepping in to set parameters. Sixty-two percent of U.S. mobile teens say that parents have placed at least one restriction on their mobile use. Ninety-three percent say that their school has.

At home, 24% of teen mobile subscribers said they were not allowed to use the phone at dinner, 22% were required to make certain grades, 21% had a limited number of minutes and 13% had a limited number of text-messages. At school, 77% of mobile teens say they are not permitted to use their phone in class and 50% are restricted from using it during assemblies. As teens around the world continue to adopt mobile phones, mobile media and messaging, marketers will be paying attention. Mobile marketing offers the most personal and direct form of engagement for an audience that, as this paper demonstrates, is spread broadly across the media ecosystem. Moreover, teens seem to be particularly open to the idea of mobile advertising. A 2008 study by Nielsen found that teen mobile media users were roughly three times as receptive to mobile advertising as the total subscriber population: just over half of teen mobile media users considered themselves open to mobile advertising.

However, while these trends are most revealing about teenagers, they happen to strike a chord at home too. Why? It’s a universal trend.

David Crystal, author of the book “txtng: the gr8 db8” (Oxford University Press), said that the idea that texting is still just a youth thing is a lingering myth of the past, and that moms learning to text has been a driving force around the world. AT&T also confirmed this is their own research conducted last year that showed 50% of moms and dads started first texting because of their teens. “The trend is pretty universal,” said Crystal, a linguistics professor in Wales. “It’s even more noticeable in places that have taken up cellphones even more obsessively than in the United States, places like Japan and China and the Philippines.”

So if the average number of text messages sent has gone up for this demographic over 500% in the last two years, how do you think it trends for Mom and Dads on the go – a key demographic for most brands. Let’s also look out 5 years and you will quickly see that this has ginormous implications for brands ignoring the mobile revolution.

Don’t forget, by the time the ink drys on these strudies, the numbers are even larger…. So get mobile. Let QWASI help take you there.

October 1, 2009 in Blog   |   1 Comment

CellSigns by QWASI Featured in REALTOR Magazine

Reach out and Text Someone Article points to Texting overtaking Voice on your cell phone.

If phone calls and e-mail are still your preferred way to share information with clients, it might not be long before text messaging takes priority. According to the 2008 REALTOR® Technology Survey, 35 percent of real estate practitioners use cell phone texting on a daily basis; another 27 percent text on at least a weekly or monthly basis.

The general public has also embraced the convenience of texting. While the number of phone calls made or received by wireless subscribers in the United States remained relatively steady from 2006 through mid-2008, text messaging skyrocketed nearly 450 percent, according to a Nielsen Mobile analysis.

Many real estate practitioners have recognized this phenomenon and are incorporating text messaging into their client communications. “One of the first things I ask when I meet new clients is if they can receive text messages on their phone, and if they would like to be updated by e-mail or text,” says Richard Van Kluyve, broker-associate with Century 21 Premier in Mount Juliet, Tenn.

About half of Van Kluyve’s clients tell him they prefer text, including one house-hunting couple in their 20s who’ve taken texting to a whole new level: “We may have spoken on the phone 10 times, but we’ve probably sent 100 text messages back and forth in the weeks I’ve been working with them,” he says.

But don’t just assume that only younger clients are apt to text. With texting now available on all mobile phones, consumers of all ages are appreciating the ease of using their keypad to send real estate practitioners a quick question, arrange a meeting, or comment on a home they’ve toured. In fact, a whole class of mobile marketing services has emerged to deliver listing data directly to a consumer’s cell phone—and capture leads for real estate practitioners in the process. Once you’re subscribed to services like CellSigns, you can post a special text code on your listings’ For Sale signs. Consumers who drive by the home can punch the code into their phone to receive a return message with property information and photos. Van Kluyve hopes for the day when clients can even receive text alerts as listings are added to the MLS, similar to e-mail alerts that are now commonplace.

Even as text messaging goes mainstream, there are times when it’s better to do things the “old-fashioned” way—with an e-mail, a phone call, or a meeting. Texting’s casual convenience is ideal for any situation in which a quick and informal message will do. Messages that are long or complicated or that can potentially spark questions from clients are better left to other media. Here are some other general guidelines:

•    Don’t text without permission. Ask clients if it’s OK for you to send them text messages. They may not be familiar with the medium, or they may simply be annoyed by it. Depending on their phone service, they also may have to pay for received messages. And never text a prospect you don’t know; it can land you in legal trouble. A pending revision to the CAN-SPAM Act prohibits sending unsolicited text messages to a wireless phone number unless the recipient has given prior consent or you have an established business relationship with the recipient. Also, the federal Do-Not-Call registry applies to text messaging.

•    Learn the lingo. Texting is all about fitting the most words into a maximum of 160 characters for the sake of speed and convenience. Even if you feel silly using shortcuts like BTW (by the way), QQ (quick question), or THX (thanks), you’ll want to be familiar with the terms so you can decipher clients’ messages. For a list of common abbreviations, visit Webopedia (www.webopedia.com).

•    Be considerate. Texting can quickly become addictive. But when meeting with clients or colleagues, don’t be absorbed with your cell phone—reading messages and hammering out replies. Let clients know at the outset if you’re anticipating an important message that will require your immediate attention. Otherwise, turn your ringtone off and reply to messages when the meeting’s over.

•    Set limits. When you encourage others to text you, you’re implying that you’ll always be ready to take their message—and customers often expect a quick response. You may want to establish hours you’ll be available.

Mike Antoniak is a journalist and technology expert with a focus on real estate applications.

May 2, 2009 in Press Releases   |   No Comments