ABI Research has estimated that more than seven trillion SMS messages will be sent worldwide in 2011. With nearly 4.2 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, that’s theoretically approaching five text messages per phone per day.
However, it says the rate of mobile phone adoption will gradually decline over the next five years, which means the number of new customers starting to use messaging will also start to slow gradually.
With MMS, email and instant messaging also available to mobile phone users, ABI Research believes the future of mobile messaging will increasingly be in unified toolkits that ‘mash up’ and converge text and multimedia messages, IM chats, emails and voicemails.