The Philippines Is Still the Undisputed Text Capital of the World
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SMS Capital
Year after year for over ten years, most cellphone users in the Philippines not only carry their mobile phones with them 24/7. They have also used their mobile phones to exchange SMS messages more frequently than any other people on earth.
Sending and receiving SMS messages began to be huge in the Philippines in the late 1990s following the demise of the pagers and alongside the emergence of electronic mails, online chatting and other more modern means of communication.
And before the turn of the century, majority of Filipino mobile users have turned the sending out of text messages into an art form.
Incidentally at the same time, Filipinos have become the world’s top users of one of the first and biggest social networking sites in the world, Friendster. And they have also emerged as the top online video watchers on the planet, regularly streaming video online and accessing video sharing websites such as Youtube.
To date, the Philippines remains as the Home for the Top SMS Senders in the World. And Filipinos also have migrated to Facebook, Twitter and most other social networking, online forum, blogging and other video and photo sharing websites. This is not hard to imagine as thousands of Filipinos continue to travel out of their country daily to find employment abroad. And we are not even counting the many thousands more who leave permanently to travel, to study, to do business and to migrate to almost every country in the world.
Today Filipinos are all over the planet, and thousands come home about once every year, but for the rest of the year, there will always be phonecalls, emails, video conferencing, youtube, facebook, twitter and of course text messaging. And the Filipinos in the Philippines are even more radical in their use of all these modes of communication.
SMS Statistics:
In 2003, the average Filipino mobile subscriber sent an average of 195 text messages per month (about 7 messages a day). By comparison, that same year the average user in the USA sent 13 a month.
In 2005, Filipinos sent on average 250 million text messages a day - 33 million subscribers
In 2006, Filipinos sent 350 to 400 million texts messages a day - 35 millions users.
In 2007, Filipinos sent a staggering 1.39 billion text messages – roughly 50 million users.
In 2009, the trend continues but there are now about 73 million subscribers.
With a recent US study revealing that the average Filipino cellphone user sends an average of 600 text messages per month (or 43% more than their counterparts in the United States).
2010 data is still not out, but there shouldn’t be any reason why it wouldn’t be mind-boggling.
Statistics: Texting Capital of the World
Comments
J@ps (author) from Southern California on February 05, 2013:
Thanks for the positive comment and the added info neilyamit.
neilyamit on July 31, 2012:
Great article! I believe the Philippines is also one of the pioneers in bill payments/processing through texts.. Smart Money & G-Cash.
If I'm not mistaken, the technology developed by Smart is currently being tested in the US.
J@ps (author) from Southern California on August 09, 2011:
You're welcome Thelma
Thelma Alberts from Germany on August 05, 2011:
Very interesting hub! I did not know until now that the Philippines is the text capital in the world. Amazing! Thanks for sharing.
