According to Dutch mobile messaging company Tekelec, the over 45s in both Europe and the States are starting to use SMS, with as many as 60% using text on a regular basis.
What does this prove? Text messaging is the first baby step before using your phone for other things, such as surfing the web on your mobile. And if 2010 really will be the year of the mobile Internet, it will only be so if it stretches across more demographics than 20 something iPhone or android users.
As a result, “brands will miss out if they only market their mobile campaigns to younger generations” says Tekelec’s Roland Cornelisse.
Among all consumers, 32% said they preferred SMS as a method of communication, compared to 33% who preferred email. The 32% score is based on people liking the immediacy of text messaging. If services like Twitter and phone Twitter applications gain mass appeal, it would be interesting to see to what extent they replace texting – personally I’ll always DM someone on Twitter first and text second.
Again, thinking about Twitter, 16% of the under 35s use SMS to vote on reality TV. With ‘social TV‘ becoming more of a phenomenon and TV networks utilising social media to drive live audience engagement, you wonder whether SMS + TV will soon be redundant as well.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Are Women More Engaged Online Than Men? (socialwebschool.com)
- Voice-Activated Internet: Text-Free Tweeting, Blogging & More (readwriteweb.com)
- Pastefire: Launch iPhone Tasks From Your Desktop Browser (readwriteweb.com)
- Paywall for Guardian iPhone app? Wired hits back over Guardian denial (onlinejournalismblog.com)
