SMS Trends & Statistics

The first ever SMS message was sent on 3 December 1992. It was transmitted via Vodafone’s network by a 22-year-old communications engineer called Neil Papworth, who used his PC (back then mobile phones did not have keyboards) to wish his friend “Merry Christmas” while he was at a party. Nokia subsequently introduced SMS to their mobile phones in 1993 and it’s safe to say that in the 25+ years since its inception, the SMS platform has continued to rise exponentially around the world and these statistics show how SMS is increasingly becoming an essential feature of mobile marketing software. Used correctly, SMS marketing can be a game changer.

• 3 billion people access the internet via mobile but as SMS API does not require an internet connection, businesses can use the technology to reach a huge number of people.
• It’s predicted that by 2020, 48.7 million people will choose to receive business SMS messages and, compared to 2016, 23% more people will opt-in to receive SMS messages from companies by 2020.
• There are a whopping 7 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide (up from 1 billion in 2003) and 5 billion people send and receive SMS messages – that’s equivalent to about 65% of the global population.
• 23 billion text messages are sent each day worldwide – 15,220,700 SMS messages are sent every minute – and 270,000 each second.
• Not only is SMS API Integration quick and easy for businesses to set up, customers also enjoy receiving and reading them – plus SMS messages have a 98% open rate - in fact, 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes while only 1 in 4 emails are opened by consumers. Texts yield an impressive 45% response rate (email’s response rate is 6%).

• While 3 out of 10 consumers would give up phone calls to use messaging, over 83% of millennial consumers said they text more than they talk on their smartphones.
• Over 68% of consumers said they text more than they talk on their smartphones.
• Smartphone users spend 22% of their time on their phone texting but only 10% of their time using email.

• Texting makes up 33% of millennial mobile device use.
• Millennial women between ages 18–34 use SMS messaging three times more often than actually calling someone
• 87% of millennials have their smartphone on them all the time and sleep with it within arm’s reach.

Given these statistics, it’s safe to say that the popularity and global reach of SMS is going in the right direction – a view that is backed up by a 2019 study by Juniper Research, which predicts 3.5 trillion SMS business messages will be sent in 2023 – up from an estimated 2.5 trillion in 2019.

If you’re interested to find out how your business could use bulk SMS API to reach a large audience, quickly and easily, get in touch to see how Cosmic SMS can help.