U.S. Text Messaging Declines Slightly in April 2012

In April 2012, 74.1 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device. But that was a decline from the 74.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers who used text messaging in January 2012.


That will bear watching, to see whether the European substitution trend, where users are using over the top messaging in place of text messaging, also is growing in the U.S. market. At the very least, it appears text messaging use has flattened out.  


Downloaded applications were used by 50.2 percent of subscribers (up 1.6 percentage points), while browsers were used by 49.0 percent (up 0.5 percentage points).


Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 0.3 percentage points to 36.0 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 33.1 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.3 percentage points), while 25.8 percent listened to music on their phones (up 1.3 percentage points), according to comScore.