A stunning 111 million mobile phone text messages (SMS’s) were sent person-to-person in the UK between midnight on 31st December 2003 and midnight on 1st January 2004, nearly double the normal daily average. New Year in 2002 set the previous record, which for the first time broke the 100 million level.
The trend for SMS is still continuing to increase, as is illustrated by the 8% increase on the most recent New Year. Further examples of growth are October 2003 hitting a new monthly record, by reaching 1.8 billion messages sent, and 76 million being sent on the day of England victory in the Rugby World Cup.
It has been know for along time that the younger generations are big SMS users and further proof of this was shown on 14th August 2003, when 67 million text messages were sent on the day that A-level (pre-university examinations) results were announced, which at that time was the previous highest number of message sent.
The figures come from the Mobile Data Association (MDA) and were collected from the four GSM operators in the UK, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone.