The Mobile Data Association has found that Britain?s 2009 text message total was 96.8 billion, evidence of consumers? ever growing appetite for mobile messaging.

The continued growth of messaging is highlighted by a 2009 daily average of 265 million text messages and 1.6 million picture messages. Last year?s text message total was 96.8 billion, while more 600 million picture messages were sent across the whole year.

?Messaging remains a highly legitimate medium to communicate with a mass audience,? said Steve Reynolds, chairman of the MDA, Britain. ?Other forms certainly have their place, but in catering to the lowest common mobile denominator, messaging is the way to go. 

?Along with voice, it's what users know and use on a daily basis,? he said.

According to the MDA, seasonal drivers still appear to propel the use of MMS, with 4.5 million picture messages being sent on Christmas Day.

Text messaging traffic over the holiday period continued to rise proportionately.

On Christmas Day 2009, 441,805, 870 text messages were sent in Britain. This is a 31 percent increase from 2008. 

New Year?s Eve and New Year?s Day 2009/10 saw 874,033,799 text messages sent, an increase of 21 percent from the year before.

New generation touch-screen handsets and the bundling of SMS messages into carrier plans has made texting easier, and seen its role develop. 

SMS is not only a convenient medium for a quick chat with friends, but also a way of participating in television voting and raising funds for needy charities. 

?The statistics demonstrate continued growth in mobile messaging; British consumers embrace the simplicity and value of the technology and continue to send each other an increasing number of messages,? Mr. Reynolds said.

?With mass market appeal, messaging is a powerful enabling platform for mobile marketing activities - provided the consumer considers it complementary and aligned with their needs,? he said. ?User context will become increasingly important for the future growth of mobile marketing.?

People are using SMS as a social messaging tool because of its simplicity and ubiquity.

There remains a significant and still developing role for text messaging. 

The majority of mobile phone users know how to quickly send a text message, wherever they happen to be. It will still be some time before the same can be said for other social messaging forms.
 
Here is a breakdown of the findings by the MDA:

Total number of text messages (SMS) sent in:
2009 total 96.8 billion
2008 total 78.9 billion
2007 total 56.9 billion
Number of text messages sent per day: 265 million

Total number of picture messages (MMS) sent in:
2009 total 601 million
2008 total 553 million
2007 total 449 million
Number of MMS messages sent per day: 1.6 million

?Improved, rich and intuitive user interfaces on mobile devices, as well as the wide introduction of bundled message tariffs have paved the way for messaging growth,? Mr. Reynolds said. ?Public visibility of the medium also helps to encourage use, whether that's via participation television, donating to charities through SMS, or responding to a commercial short code.?