UK replacing voice calls with SMS text messages

The bits are starting to fall into place in this big picture. We reported earlier that something not only for the youth, and not only for business execs, today the total UK population prefers SMS text messaging to making voice calls as we reported exactly a year ago last May. Now the first actual stats are in. The annual survey of 3,000 UK phone users by JD Power which was reported by Pocket Lint in the story Text Takes Over for Voice. And the numbers are quite amazing. JD Power in its 10 year annual survey finds the first ever drop in mobile call minutes use. But the study makes finding of a corresponding growth in SMS text messaging use.

Please also bear in mind, UK is one of Europe's leading mobile markets with almost 120% mobile phone subscriber penetration (European average penetration went past 100% last year), well above average mobile industry revenues, perhaps the world's most competitive mobile market with four operators with near identical market share (Vodafone, O2-Telefonica, Orange and T-Mobile all have between 30% and 20% market share) and a fifth the start up Three/Hutchison growing fast and leading in the 3G space. UK also has a most vibrant MVNO Mobile Virtual Network Operator market with Virgin Mobile as the most famous alternate operator. Because of heavy competition the UK has a very healthy mobile telecoms market with low costs of voice calls, a wide range of price offers and a lot of innovation with advanced services, new handsets etc. UK has been an early adopter country for SMS text messaging launching the service commercially second in the world after Finland in 1992 and UK SMS text messaging usage levels have been near the European lead every year since.

With that context, consider that voice calls for the majority of UK users - prepay (voucher) customers declined over the past year by 28%. Voice calls by postpay (contract) customers declined by 22% last year. But over the same time SMS text messaging grew by 43% ! The UK now averages over 6 text messages per day !  That is rapidly catching up with world leaders where in South Korea they average 10 SMS per day per phone subscriber, Singapore averages 12 per day and the Philippines average 15 SMS per day. The European average is under 2 SMS per subscriber per day (and American averages are still near the one half text message per cellphone subscriber per day rate)

Fascinating data. We'll monitor these developments and see if this is an early sign for a pattern to repeat across all markets. We have been observing that the American SMS usage per cellphone subscriber mirrors almost exactly the UK numbers with a 4 year lag, so this is a very likely future scenario for the American market for example. Thank you Carlo Longino at MobHappy for blogging about this story which is where I found it first.

Oh, and if you want to understand SMS text messaging, please see this posting Making Sense of the Biggest Data Application on the Planet: SMS text messaging from last summer.

Comments

[Mukund Mohan]

Tomi
What does "Please also bear in mind, UK is one of Europe's leading mobile markets with almost 120% mobile phone subscriber penetration," mean?

20% of the people have more than 1 cell phone? Really?

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Mukund

Yes, exactly. I've written about that phenomenon from my second bestselling book on telecoms, M-Profits back in 2002. Now Informa reports that 28.8% of all mobile phone owners worldwide have two or more phones.

So yes, differing from fixed landline penetrations and broadband penetrations which are usually measured against households, the mobile phone penetrations are measured per capita. Including all babies and great-great-grandparents. And across the whole 60 million person UK population there are 72 million mobile phone subscriptions. 120% penetration rate. That means at least 20% have to have 2.

In reality the babies don't have phones and many senior citizens don't have mobile phones, the real western world age pyramid has about 85% of the population with at least one phone, but then multiple subscriptions above that.

And also, yes, multiple subscrptions means multiple phones for the most part. We reported at this blogsite about a year ago that a study of British young employed adults revealed that they now think it is a cool thing to have two phones. You are important (and employed) if you have two phones..

I know this often comes as a surprise but yes, out of the 2.7 billion phone subscriptions end of last year, over 500 million were for second or third phones.

Thanks for writing

Tomi Ahonen :-)