Survey: 82% of US doesn’t use SMS text messaging
By Will Park on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 7:59 PM PST In Announcements, Research
In a seeming confirmation of the US wireless market’s inherent naivety, a new research study has shown that SMS text messaging just isn’t as popular as other reports would have you believe. Sure, there have been trillions upon trillions of SMS text messages sent over the years, but just how does that translate to a “per capita” metric? According to this survey, it wouldn’t translate very well.
Researchers at Ipsos MediaCT found that SMS text messaging was either used by a mobile subscriber on a recurring basis, or almost not at all. In the US, 82% of respondents indicated that they had never used the text messaging feature on their mobile phone. A full 3% indicated that they had used text messaging on, at most, a monthly basis, while 15% used text messaging “every week or more.”
Apparently, US mobile subscribers using SMS text messaging do so frequently and regularly – the rest tend to not use the service at all. This has resulted in a lop-sided usage-distribution in the US.
So, what’s going on here? Are people just using email that much more frequently than SMS text messages? Is voice still “king” in the US?
Sound-off in the comments section – let us know how you use your mobile phone.
[Via: NYT]
Thats just plain incredible. We here in Europe always assume that we all live in the 21st century…. sometimes we forget that thats just not the case.
So the close to 300 billion text messages that are to be sent in 2008 are generated by a mere 18% of the American mobile subscribers (= 40 million something)? I’m being carried away by the math…
But this would mean that an average of 23 text messages are send per day by this 18%… Hmmm How reliable is this study, really? Or ther is a lot of potential still for texting in the US. As comparison I believe around 80 % of European mobile subscribers use SMS.
Who were the subjects in this survey- A nursing home? Claiming that only 18% of Americans use text messaging at all seems extremely unbelievable to me. We recently conducted a survey showcasing that 98% of generation Y use text messaging, so your numbers are highly determinant upon your study group. Without that being published, I can hardly view this article as credible.
I respect many research documents and projects out there working to configure the best methods to forecast mobile, integrate mobile, and also execute it. I have been in the industry for well over 3 years now and have conducted extensive research, group interviews, focus groups, suveys etc. We have executed our own research across the U.S. on primary and secondary demographics across the 18-30 range and have had 92% of the people interviewed or surveyed that use text messaging daily, and 98% say they converse at least once a month via text messaging.
I would love to hear exactly who this research was conducted on and the exact primary and secondary demographics that were tested. 82% of American’s don’t use text messaging?!!!! Let’s go through some brief facts some legitmate sources outside of my own internal knowledge
• 63% of people said that a coupon would be the most effective incentive to get them to respond to a mobile marketing message, followed by a store discount at 52%.
Source: A recent survey from ABI Research
•The global mobile advertising market will be valued at over $16 billion by 2011.
•In August 2007, nearly 40 million US consumers received SMS advertisements, and 12 percent responded to them
Source: M:Metrics, Common Short Codes: Cracking the Mobile Marketing Code
•89% of major brands plan to market via mobile phones by 2008
•40% of major brands have deployed text messaging (SMS) campaigns
•18% of major brands have deployed multimedia messaging (MMS) campaigns
Source: Airwide Solutions independent survey of 50 brand name companies
•200+ million Americans carry mobile phones—over half of the country’s population
•Cell phones are used by over 2.7 billion people globally
By 2010, an estimated 2.3 trillion text messages will be sent and delivered globally. Those sure are some busy thumbs.
Look at the usage rates, the growth rates, and the growing markets engaging in mobile and sms technologies. Look at all the carriers switching to Unlimited Data plans, the growth of smart phones, your grandma using txt to tell you about the weather or your Grandfather’s Birthday- Across the entire U.S. population, I feel that this study is extremely skewed and believe that others would believe so as well-
I don’t believe it. Let’s see the details. There are more than 18% of drivers on the road that are texting!
It’s possible. SMS’ing from my MOT Razr was intolerable, my usage was ~ 0. Texting from iPhone (not trying to be a fan-boy here, but just voicing my direct experience) is so easy & rewarding from a UI perspective, I text on average 30-40 msgs per week, with spikes in the 60-100 range. I would presume this ease-of-use UI is true with other “smart phones” as well. Perhaps with higher smart-phone penetration in USA, SMS will go up. On the other hand, maybe Blackberry is so easy, people can stick with email. I prefer the immediacy of SMS, myself.
This research does not correspond with more thorough research conducted by m-Metrics (May-Jul 2008).
Among 30K subs interviewed, 52,6% of the respondents say they use text messaging. This sounds more realistic to me…