Study sez Americans send twice as many text messages as Europeans, twice as prone to thumb failure
by Darren Murph 
posted Dec 5th 2008 at 12:49PM
Okay, so maybe that "thumb failure" bit isn't in this particular study, but it's definitely a logical conclusion to draw, right? At any rate, a recent survey from Portio Research has found the mobile messaging market will likely bring in some $130 billion in revenues by the year's end, and that figure could climb to $224 billion by 2013. Also of note, Americans are said to send "double the number of messages that Europeans average each month," and that's despite the fact that 82% of USers never even use the service. Looking for one last tidbit to chew on? SMS was found to be the mobile messaging weapon of choice in every researched nation save for Japan, which (on the whole) relies more on mobile email than texting.[Via textually, image courtesy of JFDaily]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nerdtalker @ Dec 5th 2008 1:05PM
If my text usage numbers for the last 8 months are any indication, I'd say that's a fair bet:
Bill Start Bill End Text Data
6-Feb 5-Mar 4708 583603
6-Mar 5-Apr 5750 562119
6-Apr 5-May 9305 618925
6-May 9-Jun 4984 1111618
6-Jun 6-Jul 5230 584048
6-Jul 5-Aug 9191 425117
6-Aug 5-Sep 9051 417411
6-Sep 5-Oct 11187 273930
6-Oct 9-Nov 9766 585032
Rudolphe @ Dec 5th 2008 1:21PM
That's just ridiculous.
youngcalihottie @ Dec 5th 2008 3:03PM
thats about how my texting is too :P
I believe the results cuz in other countries a lot of people IM on their phone
especially with msn and jabber apps
but in the US we text like its IMing
Pusta @ Dec 5th 2008 2:56PM
Well, let me retype this article in your language then
"OMGWTFBBQ"
greenlight @ Dec 5th 2008 1:48PM
This is probably due to pricing models. In europe prepaid and pay per use are popular whereas in the U.S. essentially your only option is cap and bucket (i.e. "1000 included messages"), so europeans tend to watch their usage in a different way (even if the end the prices work out to the same).
Jason @ Dec 5th 2008 1:56PM
That kind of surprises me.
America lags behind the rest of the world in just about everything. 'Cept for gun related violence, of course.
Michael @ Dec 5th 2008 2:12PM
This is just amazing. So, out of all American cell phone users, 82% of them don't even text message. I guess I can see that. But the remaining 18% of users who use text messaging account for THAT many messages!? Enough to be double what Europe does? That's very very amazing.
pinke123 @ Dec 5th 2008 3:11PM
Well, teenagers in the US, are addicted to texting, they never use the phone part of the phone. In europe and the middle east, they talk like crazy, and I mean CRAZY!!
Iain @ Dec 5th 2008 6:52PM
You might wanna try re-wording that - teenagers in Europe have been texting like crazy for years.
Of course, this is done by the number of texts sent per subscriber, so the figures will be skewed in some way depending on the proliferation of mobile phones in different markets.
Stephan D. @ Dec 6th 2008 12:10AM
I think it is due to the pricing of messaging plans in the US vs. Europe. Heck, I had unlimited for free on Sprint, why wouldn't I text.