The adoption of text message marketing in the U.S. is growing substantially. It is the first time in history where an industry is required to catch up to the marketplace. For example, the adoption of the Internet in the 90s developed in parallel with the use of home computers, which in turn grew the online industry. However, there are not many companies across the U.S. that have deployed text message marketing - and there are over 200 million mobile users.
- Handsets
233 million handsets in the United States alone. The top 4 US carriers account for 79% of the subscribers.
(for latest figures refer to www.ctia.org) - Text Message Capable
The tier I carriers all promote that 95% of their subscriber phones are text-enabled. From the list of Tier I & Tier II carriers that work with MESSAGEbuzz, our market coverage is 94%. However, to understand the U.S. market better and the type of coverage you can expect, there are more than 180 wireless providers.
- Monthly SMS Traffic
12.5 billion messages in the month of June 2006, up 71% from 7.3 billion messages in June 2005.
- Messaging Service, by age group
One item of importance to consider when reading the graph, do not discount grown-ups; they usually have all the money. If this is your target market, consider your market approach and where you promote your program.
- Multimedia Messaging (Sending pictures and ringtones):
24% of the handsets are enabled.
- Worldwide Handset Market Share
Nokia and Motorola dominated with 35% and 23% market share respectively. Samsung with 12% stands third. Source: iSuppli. This is an important statistic when you mobile marketing initiatives depend on content delivery, such as text messages greater than 160 characters, ringtones or multimedia objects. (Most statistics compiled on 07/01/06)
Work closely with your solutions provider when planning your text message marketing initiatives, because there are vast differences between carriers, the services they provide, their customers, payout and refund policies if PSMS.
We recommend refering to the following two industry bodies for additional statistics: