Wirefly: One third of Americans don’t use SMS!
By Dusan Belic on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 4:58 AM PST In Research
I’m not actually sure whether we should trust a study conducted by a mobile comparison shopping site, but their numbers are staggering, so I decided to go with it nonetheless. Actually, it’s not a matter of trust, more it’s about the methodology used for collecting the data.
Anyway, according to Wirefly’s survey, when it comes to SMS usage – there are three distinctive mobile user groups in the U.S.:
- First one consists of heavy texters, which send between one or two SMS a day to hundreds a month. Roughly speaking, one third of respondents found themselves in this group. Sending a single SMS per day doesn’t make you a heavy texter in my book, though.
- 29% of respondents labeled themselves as “occasional texters.” We’ve no number how much text messages they send per month, but my guess is anywhere between 5 to 20.
- Finally, 35% said they never use text messaging. Ever. Period.
Again, I’m not sure we should trust Wirefly’s research folks. One third of U.S. mobile phone users don’t use SMS? C’mon…
[Via: SMS Text News]
I live in the US, but I lived in Europe during in 2002 / 2003. I was REALLY surprised at the ubiquity of SMS usage.
As someone in the 30+ crowd – this doesn’t seem outlandish to me. In the US – from my experience – very few adults (25+) use SMS regularly. Especially with the movement of Blackberry to consumer devices – I’m seeing a lot less SMS and alot more BB email.
Plus – VERY few people 40+ yrs even know what SMS is. They’d know about ‘texting’ but they probably wouldn’t be able to make it work on their phones. Major cities (SF, NY, LA) might be different, but that is a really small part of the US in general.
Since I don’t know the American SMS culture, could someone tell me a couple of things?
I it true that you might not be able to text someone who has a different carrier? The person receiving the SMS might have to pay something?
Jeppe, in the US, you can send SMS messages to different carriers. The recipient of the text message usually has to subscribe to a SMS messaging plan in order to receive it though – and those usually range anywhere from $5 for 100 messages per month to $15 for unlimited messages.
What?
Ummm… No… In the US anyone can text anyone. However, most customers pay $.10 to $.20 per SMS… send and receive.
If you have an SMS plan in your contract then you pay a set rate for set number.
Consider that Wirefly’s base is all post-paid subscribers — very little prepaid, so it’s skewed away from college kids and towards people with credit. I don’t know how old you are Dusan, but in my circle of 40+ year-olds, I’m the only one who uses text messaging with any frequency.
It’s crazy that you have to pay to receive messages. I asked about who you can and can’t send messages because I had heard it might not always be possible. Plus in shows like American Idol you can only vote by sms if you are on a certain carrier, which is a bit strange too.