There are some interesting statistics from a study done by Ipsos MediaCT and reported on in the New York Times by Alex Mindlin: 82% of American cell phone users never use text messaging, while 15% use it weekly of more. Only 3% used it once a month, making it apparent that those who use text messaging use it often, and others don’t.

This may seem a little low, but it doesn’t surprise me too much. I can’t think of anybody over the age of 40 in my entire family that regularly uses text messaging. The generational gap is definitely very much in effect.

Text messaging is also a massive rip off. The tiny, minuscule amount of data used by SMS is in no way congruent with the prices charged for each message. The big wireless service companies clean house by charging for individual text messages and text plans, because it uses very little of their network up and the rest is gravy.

But how long until phones are equipped with instant messaging technology that uses the data plans on each phone instead of the SMS feature? It’s all data anyway, and with AT&T charging anywhere from $5 and $20 just send text messages–even on their iPhone plan with unlimited data–how long until users get tired of shelling out potentially an extra $240 per year for something so simple for the network to handle? It’s really a scam.

The problem is that not everybody is on the same IM client, or any IM client, so sending phone-to-phone texts SMS style is a heck of a lot more practical at this point.  Merely sending the messages out to a phone number is the best and most simple way to do it right now, and until that changes or the broader cell phone community adopts different messaging clients, SMS will rule for awhile.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 9:05 pmand is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.