Top 10 text facts  

There are now 80 million mobile phones in use in the UK. That’s more than the people that live in the country! So what’s the story behind our national obsession?

• The first text message was sent in December 1992, and SMS was launched commercially for the first time in 1995.

• The first UK Prime Minister to use text was the Rt Hon Tony Blair MP who used text message technology to talk directly to the people on 25th November 2004, answering questions submitted in advance by text message from members of the public as well as in real time in a mobile chat room, transmitted live from No. 10 Downing Street

• The peak hours for texting are between 10.30pm and 11.00pm. That’s out of hours for most businesses, but with Rapide, you can send messages throughout the day and night.

• 41.8 billion texts were sent in 2006, a 38% growth on last year, with a daily average of 114 million – compared with 42 million messages a day just five years ago

• 88 million multi media messages – pictures, video or sound clips – were sent in the third quarter in 2006, around 1 million every day and just half of all mobile phones are enabled for MMS capability. We help Whitbread use this functionality for their monthly newsletter. See our case study for more information http://www.rapide.co.uk/whitbreadmms-case-study.html

• Record numbers are using the mobile internet – 15.5 million in March 2007 and it’s set to soar on the back of campaigns from Vodafone, 3 and T-Mobile

• An average of 90 million mobile phones are lying unused in the UK leaving us with a huge recycling headache. Along with this, there are around 3 billion subscriptions worldwide and only 2.3 billion users. And, one in four subscriptions is someone’s secondary or tertiary subscription. We could help you find out how many mobile phones are active in your business and save you money with one of our data collations.

• Latest text figures from May 2007 tell us that 4.5 million texts were sent in that month, which is up from 2.1 million from May 2006.

• On average, 4.7 million messages are sent every hour in Britain.

• 72% of women versus 70% of men use text regularly.

(Research source: Mobile Data Association)

This is all technology that can be used in your industry today. So are you up to date with how it can benefit your business? Call the experts to find out more – 02476 011911.

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