The Mobile Data Association has just released its first quarterly report of the year. The report reveals that as expected SMS volumes grew and that 5,000 SMS messages are sent every second in the UK.
A total of 60 billion texts were sent in the UK in 2007, 40% more than the previous year, with a staggering 290 million of these sent on New Year’s Eve alone. More interesting however was that nearly 18 million mobile phone users accessed the Internet on their phone in December 2007 and, surprisingly, there were just shy of 2 million MMS messages sent on New Year’s Eve. This saw MMS figures for December 2007 up 55% on the 32 million sent in December 2006. Overall UK MMS volumes for the year were nearly half a billion. The MDA commented that “The report contains some very compelling indications that mobile usage is evolving. While the strong upward curve of SMS volumes continues, perhaps a more telling headline number is the penetration of mobile Internet usage and multi-media messaging (MMS). We are really starting to see a much greater variety of mobile data volumes. New devices, competitive data tariffs and wider content choice mean it has never been easier for users to send an email, take a picture or access Internet content. This is a very important set of indicators.” More evidence that the new mobile services are evolving fast?…Maybe My question is will MMS suffer from the “Mini Disc” syndrome with consumers all too soon preferring to send pics and videos as E Mail attachments delivered onto smart phones? STUART