Britain remains in the grip of a texting mania as new figures reveal around 99 million text messages were faithfully banged out on little keypads every day during February.
The numbers released by the Mobile Data Association (MDA) show that person-to-person texting has soared by a whopping 26 per cent compared to the same period last year.
Valentine’s Day turned out to be a bumper texting bonanza with 120 million little bundles of love text being SMS’d to loved ones (our modesty prevents us from revealing the proportion of that figure that were sent to digi-lifestyles staff).
The SMS stats revealed that while love may be – quite literally – in the air, most people preferred to profess it from the comfort of their keypad, with only ten million romantics going to the trouble of sending a proper Valentine’s card through the post.
Despite the bumper figures for February, last December still holds the record for the highest monthly total of texts, notching up keypad-melting 3.113 billion texts.
The MDA has forecast that text messaging figures will reach an annual total of 36.5 billion text messages by the end of 2006, compared to 2005’s 32 billion total.
Those who like to peruse pretty graphs and inhale feasts’o’figures are recommended to point their browsers in the direction of Text It where a veritable stat frenzy awaits.