Industry Facts & Figures

As leaders in the industry, our marketing team are constantly searching reports, research and the web for the latest industry trends and statistics. This is where we’ll keep you informed and up-to-date with the latest forecasts, research, trends, statistics and reports.

• Global growth
• Growth per region
• SMS in financial services
• SMS in CRM
• SMS in healthcare
• SMS in marketing
• SMS in retail
• SMS and mobile payments
• SMS and age groups
• SMS in education

Global growth

The Wireless Association(R) have announced that wireless data service revenues for the first half of 2008 rose to $14.8 billion. This represents a 40% increase over the first half of 2007, when data revenues totaled $10.5 billion. Wireless data revenues now amount to 20% of all wireless service revenues, and represent money that consumers spend on non-voice services.

The Wireless Industry survey results have revealed that text messaging again set new records, with 75 billion messages reported in the month of June 2008 alone -- about 2.5 billion messages a day. This represents an increase of 160% over the 28.8 billion messages reported in June 2007.

Mobile data spend grows thanks to text with revenues reaching $49 billion worldwide in Q1 2008, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all mobile services spending.

Mobile CAPEX exceeded $131-billion in 2007 and continues to rise despite turbulent economy, estimated to reach $163.5-billion by 2013.

Text messaging remains the most important feature for cell phone buyers (73%) ahead of accessing the Internet (61%) and email capabilities (63%).

Message-based data services such as SMS and MMS still rules the roost when it comes to mobile data revenues, followed by music, video and games downloads. This is despite the growing number of advanced music-enabled handsets being marketed worldwide. Mobile data is further expected to account for more than one-quarter of mobile revenues worldwide by 2012, nearly double the 2004 percentage.

There will be 3.9 billion cellular subscriptions worldwide by the end of 2008, rising to 5.6 billion in 2013.

About half of the world’s population has a mobile phone today with mobile phone ownership worldwide topping 3.3 billion at the end of 2007.

2008 is the year worldwide mobile telecoms revenues surpass the Trillion US Dollar industry - a staggering achievement considering the total world economy is worth about 40 Trillion. Only a handful other industries are this giant – one of these is automobiles, total worldwide military spend is another, and tourism is yet another.

Mobile messaging worldwide, including SMS, MMS, voicemail, IM, and e-mail/unified messaging, will grow to $212 Billion by 2013, driven by innovation and customization. Of this, SMS will garner 83% of all mobile messaging revenues through 2013.

Gartner says mobile messages will surpass 2 trillion messages in major markets in 2008. Over 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008, a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages. Mobile messaging revenue worldwide will grow 15.7 percent in 2008 to $60.2 billion, up from $52 billion in 2007.

Around 1 billion text messages are sent worldwide each day. In June 2007 alone, 28.8 billion messages were reported, representing an increase of 130% over June 2006.

Text messaging is one of the most successful applications in the telecoms sector to date - a service that generates at least three times the gross revenues of the entire global recorded music industry. Text messages require just 140 bytes. Charged at an average $0.20 per message, a megabyte of data generates over $1,400 per megabyte.

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Growth per region

By the end of September 2010, there will be 500 million mobile subscriptions in India, according to the latest forecasts from Informa Telecoms & Media’s World Cellular Information Service (WCIS) database.

The Hispanic teen market has become significant, projected to approach 3 million subscribers by 2012. By the age of 15, penetration of wireless services among US Hispanic teens is 64% - by the age of 17, the penetration rate rises to 78%.

Britons are sending an average of 60 million more text messages per day from their mobile phones than they did this time last year, according to the latest industry figures. That equates to roughly 217 million messages per day, and more than 6.5 billion texts per month, says the report by the Mobile Data Association. In addition, British mobile phone users send almost 1.5 million picture and video-based text messages every day, an increase of 20 per cent on the same period in 2007.

The number of voice calls being made in the US has remained steady over the past two years, but text messages sent and received have increased by a staggering 450 percent. At the end of 2007, text messaging had just overtaken voice calls 218 to 213. But by the end of the second quarter of this year, an average mobile phone subscriber placed or received 204 calls, compared with sending or receiving 357 text messages.

Gartner estimates 301 billion mobile messages will be sent in 2007 in North America (up from 189 billion in 2008). This market is being driven by increased penetration of users, more frequent usage of peer-to-peer messaging, and unlimited and bucketed messaging plans.

Messaging will still be the predominant data usage on European mobile phones in 2011 despite a significant growth in mobile content and services over the next five years. An estimated 72pc of premium mobile services revenues will derive from messaging in that year.

An estimated 30 million people in South Africa were using cellphones by the end of 2006 to stay in touch despite insufficient fixed line telecommunication infrastructure. With a population of around 45 million people, this represents almost three out of every four citizens.

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SMS in financial services

Gen Y sends in excess of 11 billion texts per month, making text marketing a good way for banks to reach out to a new generation of consumers.

At Bank of America, more than 1.2 million customers have signed up for mobile services since their launch in May 2007, putting that bank at the head of the pack. Mobile banking is a win-win extension of how can bring their products and services to this Facebook/MySpace generation.

Eight of the 10 biggest U.S. banks now provide at least basic services on cellphones, allowing account holders to check their balances by tapping away on their tiny keypads.

Javelin‘s study of mobile-banking offerings at U.S. financial institutions in May found that there is a disconnect between what financial institutions offer and what consumers are most comfortable using. The study found that 70% of the offerings are browser-based, 26% are text-based and 22% are downloadable or embedded applications. About 89% of those consumers said they had sent a text message in the previous seven days, compared with 56% who browsed mobile Web pages or the 49% who had used a downloaded application.

From a point of functionality, checking balances is an essential building block because it is easily the most common mobile-banking transaction. Among online households that use mobile banking, 62 percent check balances. While any of the three platforms can ably handle this routine need, it is particularly suited to an SMS text-based platform because texting capabilities are ubiquitous, working with all phones and all carriers. After that come a number of popular transactions such as viewing statements, monitoring transactions and paying bills.

SMS text may also appeal to the underbanked or unbanked populations, many of whom may be unlikely to subscribe to expensive data plans that are necessary to use the browser or a downloaded application.

Text messaging is the easiest, most universal and most cost-effective way to provide critical and timely financial information to mobile banking customers. According to a survey US survey, 74% of respondents use SMS occasionally to very frequently, 22% have done Web browsing from their mobile device, and 20% download an application at least occasionally.

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SMS in CRM

Results from the 2008 Aberdeen study found that 80% of best-in-class call centers are leveraging text messaging, and also concluded that there is a marked difference in adoption in non-best-in-class organizations which are not taking advantage of an opportunity to add cost effective touch point between a given company’s expert resources and their customers through the use of text messaging.

SMS is a killer call centre application due to the fact that it is ubiquitous and personal while relatively inexpensive. Almost 70% of UK contact centres’ outbound calling costs will be to mobiles by mid-2008, which hikes operational costs. In comparison, SMS costs only 5 - 10p per message, compared to an outbound phone call that can cost £3.08

58% of consumers under 35 years consider text messaging a valuable way to receive information from suppliers.

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SMS in healthcare

In a move to cut the cost of patient DNAs (Did Not Attends) appointments, NHS Trusts across the UK are beginning to embrace a two-way SMS service that reminds patients of their hospital out-patient appointments and allows them to reply with a confirmation or to advise that they won't be attending. A missed out-patient appointment costs each Trust £100, bringing the total wasted across the NHS to more than half a billion pounds each year. In London, an average of 12% of all outpatient appointments in the capital are missed resulting in a loss of more than £134 million while in NHS Scotland the annual loss is more than £30 million.

SMS services could save healthcare industry over £250 according to a KPMG survey that found 12% of all NHS first appointments and 14% of second appointments are missed. Each appointment missed costs an average of £67, which, over a year, adds up to £262 million.

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SMS in marketing

In the 2008 US elections, mobile campaigning has proven a more cost sensitive, highly effective, alternative to traditional campaigning methods. A study by researchers from Princeton and Michigan Universities, together with the US Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) New Voter Project Mobile Voter and Working Assets found that text message reminders to new voters increased an individual’s likelihood of voting by close to 5 percentage points.

Limbo/Gfk’s recently released 'Mobile Advertising Report' reveals that mobile users' awareness of mobile ads is increasing, up 33% in nine months, though mobile phone usage grew just 6%. In Q3, around 4 out of 10 Americans (104 million) recalled seeing mobile ads on their devices. The most commonly recalled ads are those seen in text messages. Mobile web ad awareness is roughly 50% that of text messaging ads, although it is growing slightly faster, found the survey.

Mobile advertising is set to become a mainstay of UK marketing plans over the next two years. The IAB’s Mobile Council surveyed 115 agencies, media planners, creatives and advertisers and found that 62 per cent of respondents foresee mobile spend will grow over the next two years, with the medium becoming a standard feature of budgets by 2010. Respondents predicted that mobile will ‘tip’ over the next two years largely as a result of the medium’s robust and reliable audience metrics such as measurement and campaign evaluation.

In independent survey commissioned by O2 of large brands in the financial services, retail and manufacturing sectors, of all mobile marketing solutions, SMS marketing is proving to be the most popular with almost a third of businesses surveyed using text messages to reach their existing or potential customers. Significantly, brands are not only using SMS, MMS and mobile barcoding techniques to communicate with their customers but almost half of those questioned (44%) use mobile for internal communication campaigns, with the method used by nearly all of those in the manufacturing sector (98%).

According to the O2 study, the most popular use of mobile marketing is for information services campaigns across the retail (60%) and financial services sectors (54%), while 40% use mobile marketing to send booking confirmations, to deliver appointment updates and to confirm items in stock. Other popular uses of mobile marketing highlighted in the report include: text to win competitions (28%), text to call back campaigns (24%) and text to email campaigns (24%).

BMW sent an MMS to customers in its database with a photo of how their model of car would look with the recommended snow tires. Customers also had the option to see how other tires would appear on their cars by clicking on a downloadable application. In addition, users were given the option of calling their nearest dealer directly, or requesting a call back. The campaign garnered a 30% conversion rate overall, and was one of BMW more successful campaigns.

A major inhibitor to mobile advertising campaigns in the American market has been cellphone users' slow adoption of texting and non-voice related activities. With texting now getting close to outpacing voice calls two to one, it can't be long until phone users adapt to more SMS based advertising and marketing techniques as well.

According to a new report from Avot Media, a recent survey found that 55% of young (under age 29) mobile users are willing to send a text message to receive mobile video of interest to them. And 95% say it's easy to do so.

SMS is the most often recalled mobile marketing method with text messaging generating far more responses – 70 percent – compared with 41 percent to surveys and 30 percent to email offers. Mobile web and coupons were also much less effective than text/SMS amongst respondents.

SMS is an effective marketing channel with 90% of SMS messages being opened compared to 25% for emails, according to a study of UK consumers.

M:Metrics reports that text-based marketing is growing steadily across Western Europe and the US. The measurement firm reports that the number of mobile subscribers who have received an ad via SMS grew at a rate of 15% in Western Europe from May 2007 to January 2008 and in the US, about 27%.

New figures from analyst firm Juniper Research estimate that almost 3 billion mobile coupons will be issued to Mobile Users by 2011, with just under $7 billion of discounts redeemed. The new Juniper study finds that mobile coupons are becoming an increasingly important tool for brand owners and retailers to provide a ‘push to purchase’ capability for mobile marketing and advertising campaigns.

SMS is proving its worth as a marketing medium. In a study of US consumers, text ads generated an 11% response in the third quarter of 2007 versus the second quarter of 2007 (4.77 million people of 41 million U.S. consumers responding to text ads they’ve received).

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SMS in retail

SmartReply surveyed mobile consumers to discover how they were planning to make it through the recession. Overwhelmingly, consumers said coupons were one way they planned to save. More than 65% of those surveyed said they were 'more likely' to use coupons during a recession and nearly 60% said they planned to increase how often they used coupons. Nearly one-quarter of respondents said that they had used a mobile coupon in the past. Of the three-quarters who had not responded to an mCoupon, 33% said that was because they hadn't received any mCoupons to date.

The online survey, titled “Mobile Marketing: Consumer Perspectives,” showed that text messaging accounted for 70 percent of consumer mobile marketing responses compared with a 41 percent response rate to surveys and a 30 percent response rate for email offers.

To entice people into their store and to raise their average basket size, Bristol International Airport put together a special promotion for passengers who'd opted-in to the easyJetText service, offering a £5 discount to anyone spending over £35. By sending special offers to passengers waiting at the Bristol airport by text message there was a 50% increase in average spend in Tax & Duty Free stores.

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SMS and mobile payments

Only 1.5% of U.S. consumers have ever used their mobile phones to make a payment, but almost 50% are aware that they can do so, according to a Mercatus survey of more than 2,500 adults. The percentage of people who have made payments with their mobile phones is likely to grow to 15% among those 18 to 30 by 2013 and close to 50% among those under 35 by 2018, the firm found.

A Juniper Research's analysis of the global mobile payments opportunity forecasts that 2.1 billion mobile subscribers will "pay by mobile" for digital goods downloaded to their mobile phones by 2013. According to Juniper, there is a significant growth opportunity not only for mobile payment systems, software, support and consultancy services vendors, but also for mobile operators to increase their ARPU as transaction frequencies accelerate.

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SMS and age groups

The Student PIRGs New Voters Project and Credo Mobile, in cooperation with the University of Notre Dame recently released a study demonstrating the effectiveness of using text/SMS messages to mobile phones to mobilize young voters during the 2008 US primary election. The study found that text message reminders to young voters increased turnout by 4.6 percentage points. Messages sent the day before the election, increased turnout by 2.1 percentage points.

For uber-connected 9- to 14-year-olds, who can't yet drive and might not have their own computers, cell phones are a lifeline to their best friends, favorite music and videos and chosen brands. Market researcher MultiMedia Intelligence says the U.S. had more than 16 million teen mobile subscribers in 2007, up 12% from 2006.

According to a survey conducted by Opinion Research Corp. (ORC), a text is far more likely to elicit a quick response than voice mail. In fact, those under the age of 30 are four times more likely to respond within minutes to a text message compared to a voice mail, and 91 percent respond to a text message within one hour. Adults 30 and older are also quick to text -- and are twice as likely to respond within minutes to a text message as compared to a voice message.

US teens between the ages of 13 and 17 now send or receive 1,742 messages per month, compared to the second-highest age group, 18 to 24 year olds, who send and receive about 790 messages.

According to the telephone survey conducted in October by Opinion Research Corp. (ORC), a text is far more likely to elicit a quick response than voice mail. In fact, those under the age of 30 are four times more likely to respond within minutes to a text message compared to a voice mail, and 91 percent respond to a text message within one hour. Adults 30 and older are also quick to text -- and are twice as likely to respond within minutes to a text message as compared to a voice message.

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SMS in education

According the survey conducted among 1,493 parents of UK schoolchildren between 15 and 21 in August 2008, over two-thirds of parents would like schools to use technologies such as text messaging and the Internet to communicate with them more frequently. Currently, only 8% of parents surveyed are kept informed using these methods, with only 2% using text messages. The survey undertaken by Populus for Becta found that 68% of parents would like their child’s school to text or e-mail them in order to provide more frequent communications.

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