The text messaging service that started in the late 80s as a way of communication for phone engineers busy building the mobile network has now become the most used mobile technology on the planet.
Text message or Telenote as it was called in 1993 was introduced in the consumer market by Vodafone. Very soon other phone operators followed the trend and text messaging became popular in 1998.
A recent survey done by Mobile Data Association (MDA) shows how deep rooted this technology has become in our day to day communication. The data collected by them showed that British phone users had sent 25 billion texts in 2004. This is 4.5 billion more than the number of text messages sent last year. It is estimated that they will send as many as 30 billion this year. That comes to around 500 messages per person UK.
The number of text messages that swarmed over the mobile network on the New Year eve were 20% more than those sent on last years eve.
The survey shows that last month at least 2.27 billion text messages were sent "person to person" or in other words it is 75.6 million texts a day! Never before had mobile messaging had reached this figure.
The number of messages sent is rapidly rising. For mobile market this means a lift in revenue where it could reach $69bn by 2007.
It is surprising how video and other multimedia messaging options have not affected the growth of text messaging trend. Perhaps the answer lies in the simplicity and comfort of text messaging.
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