The Communications Market 2010: UK
SMS use soars even higher
Despite the increasing use of internet-based communications services such as social networking sites and instant messaging (see Section 4.1.2), the numbers of text messages sent by mobile users continued to climb, growing by nearly one-third to 104.4 billion messages in 2009 (representing an average of over four a day for every person in the UK), a faster rate of growth than in 2008 (24.8%) but on a similar level to annual growth between 2005 and 2007 (Figure 5.51). Meanwhile, the volume of MMS grew by just 5.8% during 2009 to around half a billion messages.
An increasing proportion of mobile users, particularly in younger age groups, rely on SMS as their main means of communication via a mobile handset, rather than mobile telecoms. In fact, as shown in Section 1.3 (The Consumer's Digital Day), penetration of SMS on a daily basis is actually higher among mobile users than is voice. This increasing growth in SMS volumes is likely to reflect the increasing availability of tariff plans with unlimited text allowances at lower price points; attractive not only to younger users but also to most cost-conscious consumers.
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