SMS popularity exploding

SMS popularity exploding

Singapore, Reuters

The volume of mobile phone text messages in Asia outside of Japan is expected to more than double as a share of worldwide volume to 26 percent by 2005 from 12 percent now, an industry source said on Wednesday.

Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are the current Short Messaging Services (SMS) leaders in the region while Indonesia and Malaysia are catching up very quickly, said Boudewijn Pesch, Asia pacific managing director for CMG Wireless Data Solutions.

"In China, SMS traffic is doubling every month," Pesch said at the sidelines of the SMS Messaging Asia Pacific Summit 2001 in Singapore..

In China, one of the biggest markets in terms of mobile subscribers, phone users send on average three text messages a month, he said.

The Philippines is dubbed the text message capital of the world. Around 100 million messages a day course through cell firms' networks in that country.

According to industry group GSM Association, the number of text messages sent to mobile phones worldwide has reached one billion a day.