NEW YORK – Americans are saying CUL8TR to text messaging, a wireless industry group says, as Internet-based applications such as Apple’s Messages are starting to take over from what was once a cash cow for phone companies.
CTIA — The Wireless Association said Thursday that Americans sent 2.2 trillion text messages last year, down 5 percent from 2011. That’s still 19 text messages per person per day.
Additional Photos
Text messages vaulted into the U.S. mainstream in 2007, despite often costing 10 cents each. Costs came down quickly as phone companies started selling monthly “bundles” of texts. Now, many phone companies give text messaging away for free as part of a plan that mainly meters the amount of data used.
That has helped stave off mass migration to Internet chat applications and Facebook messaging in the U.S., making the decline in 2012 somewhat surprising, said Pamela Clark-Dickson, an analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media in Britain.
In countries where phone companies have kept the cost of text messaging high, the use of chat applications that avoid those fees has exploded. Those apps include WhatsApp and allow people to text other users of the same service for free, using the Internet and bypassing the phone companies’ text systems. Informa estimates that the number of messages sent through such services worldwide exceeded those sent by text last year.
The text message, or Short Message Service, was created in France and Germany in the 1980s as part of the specification for the “GSM” digital cellphone standard. The first commercial services appeared in Europe in the 1990s.
They were slow to appear in the U.S., where the cost of cellphone calls was much lower than in Europe.
Clark-Dickson said text messaging will likely remain popular as a way to communicate with people who don’t use chat applications.
In addition, businesses have started using it as a way to communicate with customers.
“At this point, SMS has still got quite a lot going for it,” she said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.