Ofcom says messaging revenue is falling as volume increases

Ofcom has just published its Telecommunications Market Data Update for the second quarter of 2008. It says the number of SMS and MMS messages sent was 4.8% higher than in the previous quarter. although messaging revenue fell by 1.7% over the same period. Total mobile revenue across the four mobile operators in the survey (Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile) increased by 1.2% compared to the previous quarter, driven by a 1.9% increase in revenue from calls and other charges. [Press release]

UK now sending 6.5 billion texts per month

The Mobile Data Association has released its latest quarterly figures for UK mobile phones. In the third quarter of 2008 (July - September) it says usage for text and picture messages has continued increasing. Texting is up 38% year-on-year from Q3 2007, while MMS usage is up 20%. We're now sending an average 6.5 billion text messages sent per month - that's almost 217 million per day - and we're also sending an average of 1,495,525 multimedia messages every day. [Press release]

Messaging booming but SMS revenue to drop in Europe

Mobile messaging - text messages, MMS and instant messaging - is increasingly popular in Western Europe, although SMS revenue is dropping. New research from Frost & Sullivan says that texts generated €16.42 billion revenue in Western Europe in 2007, which is expected to drop by 2.9% per year until it reaches €14.59 billion in 2011. However, MMS and IM revenue is expected to grow in the same period. [Press release]

Vodafone launches Facebook text service

Vodafone has launched a unique service that'll let UK mobile phone users send text messages from their Facebook profile to friends. The Vodafone Connect to Friends application lets Facebook users send texts (and, from later this month, picture messages as well) to mobile phones on any network. Vodafone is including 25 free text credits, with additional messages costing 10p for text and 30p for a picture. The service can be used by anyone regardless of their mobile network. [Press release]

MMS problem for T-Mobile

We're back from our break, so it's time to start catching up with the news. Here's a story from last week: up to 60% of T-Mobile picture messages haven't been sent because of a problem with the UK network... although re-sending the message may be successful. [Source: Mobile News]

UK mobile internet and text use continues to rise

The Mobile Data Association's latest report, which covers January to May 2008, shows that SMS and mobile internet use is still growing. 212 million text messages are now sent in the UK every day, with annual growth expected to be around 30% for the year. Meanwhile, mobile web use is up 25% in the last two years to 16.5 million people per month. Growth in MMS is also good, up 30% from May last year to 46 million messages per month. [Press release]

European picture messaging has increased by 16% this year

Picture messaging has grown by 16% in Europe over the last 12 months... and by 60% in the USA, where the MMS trend started later. The latest M:Metrics Benchmark Study (published by comScore) also showed that US picture messaging usage is higher than average in July and August, while UK usage is higher in December. 78% of Europeans and 66% of Americans now own a camera phone, with nearly a quarter of all US mobile users and about a third of Europeans having sent or received photos in April this year. [Press release]

Mobile users ditching MMS

Mobile application site GetJar.com says 15% of its users have dropped MMS in favour of messaging software, including migg33, eBuddy and Nimbuzz. It says high cost, poor reliability and alternative social applications are all to blame. [Source: 160characters.org]

New mobile photo blog service launched

A mobile photo blogging service called NowThen has been launched by UK-based Blinkx. Photos can be stored online and sent to any number of people for the price of a standard MMS message. [Source: BrandRepublic.com]

MMS starting to follow rapid growth of text messages?

The UK's Mobile Data Association says MMS traffic in the UK is starting to increase dramatically. It points out that text messages hit '1 billion a year' after 6 years - and that picture messages are at around 50% of that figure after 5 years, despite only half of all mobiles having cameras. 57 million picture messages were sent last December, an increase of 55% from December 2006. In addition, almost 17 million UK mobile users (23% of all customers) accessed the internet from their mobile phones in December. [Sources: ITPro.co.uk, Sky News via Yahoo]

Orange reveals mobile data growth

UK mobile network Orange has just released its second Digital Media Index, comparing digital mobile usage with its first survey from May 2007. The Orange Digital Media Index shows that:

• Picture messaging has increased by 37%, with over 1 million photos uploaded from mobiles to online photo albums in August (although arguably this second statistic isn't "picture messaging"). So-called 'active' MMS users send an average 4.3 picture messages per month.
• Text messaging has increased by 25% to a billion text messages sent per month, which is an average 71 per customer
• Music downloads have increased by 15%
• Games downloads have increased by 3.4%

Overall, the company says mobile data services account for nearly 22% of network revenue in the last nine months.