How many SMS messages will be sent on New Years Eve 2008/9

On New Years Eve 2008, an estimated 43 billion SMS messages where sent globally! Which was up 30% on 2007, but the rise wasn’t evenly spread… Portugal tripled and The Netherlands doubled. Developing nations are by far the fastest expanding mobile markets, India’s 220 million mobile subscribers sent over a billion, a 300% rise on daily norms, but the Phllippines outshone everyone, with 1.4 billion SMS’s from a subscriber base of only 50 million!

When it comes to SMS messaging the USA ranks very low, when mobile users were asked whether they have or would send a “Happy New Year” text message, all countries except the USA showed an increase:
U.S.A. 35%; France 85%; Germany 88%; Spain 90%; Italy 92%

For an example of how amazing all this electronic communication can look, have a look at this gorgeous visualisation of the SMS messages sent on New Years Eve in Amsterdam

[vimeo 2312662]

By Aaron Koblin (check out his site there’s some cool stuff on there!)
and his vimeo page

As our time has become very precious and much more of a commodity to be valued, more & more of us are moving away from paper based communication during the festive season, brevity is king, but even voice calls only showed a moderate increase (guess they take too long and you can only speak to one person at  a time), electronic communication via email, SMS & the likes of Twitter have increased dramatically, so it will be interesting to see how the mobile networks & Twitter cope in the next few hours… I hope Twitter have their fail whale primed and ready to go : )

So just in case I thought I’d get in early and wish you all a fantastic 2009!