Despite a doubling of the cost to send a mobile-device text message, users are still thumbing messages at record rates.
Wireless data is changing, and consumers are making it clear that texting is a favorite way to communicate, according to CTIA, a wireless association based in Washington, D.C.
There were 75 billion messages recorded in June alone, about 2.5 billion messages per day, according to CTIA’s Semi-Annual Wireless Survey. That’s a 160 percent increase from the 28.8 billion messages sent in June 2007.
Each year the number of text messages has increased. Last December users sent 48 billion text messages, up from 19 billion in December 2006.
Steve Largent, chief executive and president at CTIA, said more texts were sent and received in the first half of this year than in all of 2007.
“Well, it is obvious Americans are still all thumbs,” Largent said in a podcast from CTIA’s Wireless, IT and Entertainment 2008 trade show.
Research firm Gartner estimated that there were 189 billion mobile messages sent in 2007 in North America, and it expects the messages to reach 301 billion in 2008.
Texting is not just personal. More people are using text messaging in the workplace, according to IDC, because they like the instant gratification. Two-thirds of respondents of an IDC/Nortel survey of 2,400 employees in 17 countries said they use text messages for both personal and business reasons. Some said they use it to send orders to suppliers.
CTIA released its findings just one day after Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), sent a letter to Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T, the four carriers covering 90 percent of the wireless market, asking why Sprint increased the price for texting from 10 cents per message to 20 cents and why the other carriers followed.
Kohl questioned the price increase because…