Text Message Statistics - October 2009

Text messaging continues to be enormously popular in the US reaching new levels every month.

More than 740 billion text messages carried on carriers’ networks during the first half of 2009. That’s an average of 4.1 BILLION text messages sent/received each day. That’s nearly double the number from last year, when only 385 billion text messages were reported for the first half of 2008.

Wireless subscribers are also sending more pictures and other multi-media messages with their mobile devices—more than 10.3 billion MMS messages were reported for the first half of 2009, up from 4.7 billion in mid-year 2008. MMS stands for MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service and more commonly referred to as ‘Picture Messaging’ to subscribers. iPhone users in the US recently received access to MMS through AT&T last month (read our post: iPhone finally gets MMS). For more information on MMS, see What is MMS post.

Just last year, Nielson Mobile released important trends showing how Texting outpaces Voice as the number one activity on a cell phone.

For the latest CTIA Wireless Carrier Survey, click here.

October 7, 2009 in Blog   |   No Comments

Publishers Add Mobile to their Publications

Survey: Print Publishers Ready to Capitalize on Mobile Market

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, The digital advertising and publishing market is poised for growth, supported by new mobile devices and advances in applications and technology. Today, print publishers are focusing on the market as a prime opportunity to expand their brand, reach new audiences and generate additional revenue while offering advertisers the chance to reach locally targeted, engaged audiences who are on-the-go.

“The results of ABC’s survey demonstrate that publishers recognize the growing importance of mobile devices in consumers’ daily lives and are actively embracing mobile as a new way to extend their brands,” said Michael Lavery, ABC president and managing director. “We continue to hear from newspapers and magazines as they integrate mobile into their digital publishing plans. And interest in ABC’s multimedia reporting options is very high, with mobile poised to be one of the next distribution channels included on those reports.”

Publishers Formatting Web Sites for Mobile Viewing
Publication Type	Percent Formatted for Mobile
Consumer magazines	42.2%
Business publications	44.7
Newspapers	57.5
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations, September 200

Some Highlighed the Survey Revealed:
* More than 80 percent of newspaper and magazine respondents believe people will rely more heavily on mobile devices as a primary information source in the next three years.

* Nearly 70 percent of respondents agree that mobile is receiving more attention at their publication this year than last. More than a third believe their publication already has a well-developed plan for attacking and conquering the mobile market.

* Forty-four percent of respondents who track mobile’s impact on their Web site traffic said the devices increased visits by up to 10 percent today. Half believe mobile traffic to their Web sites will increase by five to 25 percent in the next two years.

* Among senior executive respondents, 56 percent said their publication has plans to develop a smartphone application in the next 24 months, in addition to the 17 percent of respondents who already have an app in production.

* Regardless of mobile’s anticipated rise, ABC publisher members do not plan to abandon their print publications in favor of a digital-only product in the near term. While 55 percent believe that digital delivery of their publication is important to their strategic future, three-fourths believe that their publication will be available in a print form five years from now.

* More than half of the survey respondents believe that the future business model of mobile content will be supported by both advertising and subscriptions.

* Nearly a third believe that mobile will have a significant impact on their publication’s revenue in just three years.

“Although the mobile market is in its early stages, it offers tremendous opportunities for marketers to reach and interact with audiences,” said Edward Montes, executive vice president and managing director of Havas Digital North America. “With text and multimedia messaging, branded mobile apps, content sponsorships, display advertising, paid search, and location-based targeting, the platform becomes an integral component of the overall marketing strategy. It has enormous potential for clients, in my view, so it’s great to see newspapers and magazines embracing digital publishing.”

Survey Conclusions
* It’s early, but there are positive signs. The mobile market is definitely receiving more attention than ever before. For some respondents, planning is still in the beginning stages and publishers are wading through the information and technology, trying to decide on the right strategy. For other newspapers and magazines, many mobile initiatives are well under way, supported by advertising and sponsorships.

* Mobile will drive Web traffic. Most respondents believe that mobile will be responsible for a five to 50 percent increase in Web site traffic in the next three years.

* Publishers are betting on both smartphones and e-readers and are actively exploring the vitality of both as a new distribution channel. Both devices are in the early-adoption phase but are quickly gaining momentum with large daily newspapers and leading consumer magazines.

* Early business models will be based on a combination of advertising and subscriptions. Publishers agree that the mobile market will be both ad- and subscription-supported and many anticipate that mobile will contribute to the bottom line in just three years. Publishers believe there are many opportunities for paid mobile advertising, including sponsorship, search, video, and banner ads.

* Advertiser demand for accountability will grow as ad spend grows. Respondents agree that independent third-party auditing would increase mobile’s credibility and is likely to be demanded by advertisers as ad spending increases in this area. Data should be reported on ABC statements.

About the Survey
More information, including an executive summary of the survey findings is available on ABC’s Web site. The research for “Going Mobile: How Publishers Are Preparing for the Burgeoning Digital Market” was conducted via a voluntary Web-based survey held between June 25 and July 10, 2009. To learn more, visit http://www.accessabc.com.

October 2, 2009 in Uncategorized   |   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

ATT has Best Performance & Most Reliable for Mobile Messaging

A good friend of ours at Keynote Systems, the network monitoring company that tracks and monitors performance in various locations, has a compelling set of numbers in his email signature. I am ALWAYS shocked to see how well some networks perform over others. You know what I mean whether it’s ‘America’s Most Reliable Wireless Network’ or as another hangs their hat on ‘More Bars in More Places’ - but how do they really compare? And what does each mobile user care about most at the end of the day? Service that just works when we need it to work.

So these results may shock some of you:

	Average Availability (%)	Average Performance (secs)
AT&T	98.6113	8.9673
Sprint	94.7547	16.1505
T-Mobile	98.5483	11.1372
Verizon	97.1555	15.8996
Overall	97.2675	13.038

Want to learn more about these numbers and how they impact your business, give our friends at Keynote a call. Tal Turner can be reached at 650-403-3435 or via email: tal.turner @ keynote.com (tell him Dave from QWASI sent you). He’ll have a good laugh.

July 13, 2009 in Blog   |   No Comments