CTIA: By the numbers, data revenue up

At each of its major events, CTIA shares numbers from its wireless surveys, with the latest – not surprisingly – showing major growth in wireless broadband usage.

A few of the more notable data bits:

• Wireless data service revenues increased 25.7% from the last half of 2008 to reach more than $22 billion for the last half of 2009
• Overall, wireless data revenues grew to total more than 28% of all wireless service revenues.
• There are now more than 257 million data-capable devices in consumers’ hands, up from 228 million at the end of 2008. 50 million of these devices are smart phones or wireless-enabled PDAs and nearly 12 million are wireless-enabled laptops, notebooks or aircards.
• For text messaging 822 billion text messages were sent during the second half of 2008, and more than 1.5 trillion messages sent for the entire year. Meanwhile, 24.2 billion MMS multimedia messages were sent in the second half of 2009, more than double than all of 2008
• On the voice side, wireless customers used 1.12 trillion minutes in the last half of 2009, up from 38 billion minutes in the last half of 2008
• Wireless service revenues for the last half of 2009 amounted to almost $77 billion—up from a little more than $75 billion in the last half of 2008.

CTIA Chairman Steve Largent said the growth of mobile data in particular demonstrates the wireless industry still has room to grow, even as penetration of basic mobile devices reaches the saturation point.

More information on the service is available at http://www.ctia.org/advocacy/research/index.cfm/AID/10316.