Thursday 7 February 2008

Text in the UK

There are some interesting statistics in the UK papers at the moment about the volume of text messages sent in the UK. I first saw them in the london paper last night, but they were also in the Guardian.

The data is from the Mobile Data Association, who publish regular updates on the use of SMS and MMS in the UK.

6.1 billion text messages were sent in the UK in December 2007. Using Ofcom's latest number of 69.7 million mobile handsets in the UK, this is 87.5 messages per person per month (on average), or nearly 3 texts a day. Of course the distribution of the number of messages sent per person is not uniform.

The other interesting statistic is 57.62 million picture messages (ie MMS) in December, which equates to each person sending 10 MMS per year. I know I have never sent an MMS. The prohibitive early tarrifs of GPB 1.50 per MMS, compared to GPB 0.10 per SMS put me off. How many other people are in the same position?

The next question is how does this compare to the usage of Web 2.0 communications tools: Instant Messaging and Social Networking?

No comments: