It's hard to imagine today, but it was only 15 years ago when mobile phones were rare – dispersed sporadically throughout the world and really only used by a select few individuals. The global adoption of the technology around the turn of the century was unprecedented. Today, mobile phones rival televisions on the consumer electronics global popularity scale. And while usage is massive, analysts see it getting even bigger in the coming years.
According to an infographic compiled by a number of research firms, mobile traffic per user is expected to grow exponentially each year up until 2016. In 2011, global mobile media traffic stood at about 92 megabytes per user. By 2016, that traffic is expected to grow to 1.2 gigabytes per user. But, as previously reported in this blog, SMS is still the dominant application on mobile phones, so as adoption increases so will SMS usage.
The incredible growth is spurred by massive adoption in emerging markets. In 2003, only 61 percent of the world had mobile coverage. Today, that number is higher than 90 percent. These emerging nations are embracing text messaging the way the U.S. has as well. According to the source, countries like Kenya and Indonesia are leading this revolution. While 89 percent of Kenya's national population send and receive text messages, a staggering 96 percent of Indonesia's population do the same.
This is a big opportunity for mobile marketers. Global adoption is on the rise, and once these citizens get their hands on mobile phones, they are discovering ways to communicate that are more effective than phone calls. Marketers should be planning global SMS marketing campaigns to take advantage of this trend. Swift SMS Gateway provides the tools marketers need to implement a global mobile marketing strategy.
