Ez Texting SMS Marketing News

Verizon had a very good February:

Verizon Wireless announced that its subscribers sent and received close to 20 billion text messages in the month of February, just eight months after the operator's first 10 billion-message month, June 2007.

What should you take away from this eye-popping number?

Verizon adds that opportunities for messaging programs and short codes continue to grow, citing the increasing popularity of text-based contests, promotions and opt-in campaigns. "The volume of text messages being sent and received by Verizon Wireless customers is growing exponentially," said Verizon chief marketing office Mike Lanman in a prepared statement. "Whether it's sports scores, news updates, the latest weather forecast, or the 'joke of the day', text messages are a tremendous way for anyone to stay on top of what's happening in the world.

Read the whole thing at Fierce Mobile Content.

If this is true, it is very interesting:

The launch of a 3G iPhone looks more likely than ever, according to Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney who claims Apple has already placed an order for ten million of the second-generation handsets with an Asian manufacturer.

Read more.

Sprint wins the race to become the first mobile provider to offer free, direct access to MySpace over their network:

Sprint and MySpace promise subscribers the tools to edit their MySpace profiles, view and add friends, browse photo albums, post blogs and bulletins, and send and receive messages via mobile device. According to MySpace, the mobile service generated more than a million unique users during beta trials.

Read more at Fierce Mobile Content.

A sign of the times:

Consumers worldwide will buy more multimedia mobile phones than TV sets this year, according to a new report from Research and Markets.

The Dublin, Ireland-based firm predicts that 300 million such phones that can play audio and video and browse the Internet will be sold in 2008. Its new report, "Mobile Media 2008: The Third Screen for Entertainment," also found that half the world's population, or 3.3 billion people, now have a mobile phone subscription.

And what does that mean?

"The potential size of the market for mobile media is staggering," the report noted. "The thought of several billion consumers carrying around a hand-held device that is capable of playing video and audio entertainment is making content creators salivate."

Read more at the Hollywood Reporter.

Fox News reports:

Apple may be planning to release a 3G (third-generation cell-phone technology) version of its hugely popular iPhone as early as the middle of the year, according to reports.

An industry analyst's note reports that Apple has lined up the German chipmaker Infineon Technologies to supply parts for its next-generation phone, and may release the product as soon as June or July.

Exciting news...read the entire article at Fox News.

BusinessWeek has an interesting story about the nascent iPhone app business:

Executives at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers had a running bet as they announced a $100 million fund to encourage developers to build tools for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. The wager was over how many business plans they'd receive in the first 30 days after the Mar. 6 announcement. Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy won't divulge the number, but says it was exceeded within 36 hours.

So great is the interest among developers in creating a software-based tool, or application, for Apple's popular iPhone or iPod Touch that on the same day Apple announced the release of the software developer's kit, or SDK, Apple's Web site crashed. Many developers resorted to grabbing the file using BitTorrent file-sharing technology. On March 12, Apple reported that more than 100,000 developers downloaded the kit in the first four days it became available.

Read more @ BusinessWeek.

Promising results:

A NEW REPORT BY NIELSEN Mobile suggests that consumers are gradually warming to mobile advertising. Among the findings: nearly one-quarter of all U.S. mobile subscribers (23%) say they have viewed mobile advertising in the last 30 days.

The Nielsen study also found the number of mobile data users who recalled seeing advertising jumped 38%--from 42 million to 58 million between the second and fourth quarters of 2007.

Furthermore, more than half of mobile data subscribers (51%) who saw an ad responded to it by sending a text-message, clicking on it, or calling a specific number. (Nielsen estimates 199 million Americans use some type of non-voice mobile service from text-messaging to video streaming.)

Read more @ MediaDailyNews

The most popular mobile data segment of all, SMS, is set to continue its growth in 2008 with estimates that over 2 trillion messages will be sent worldwide. This supports our claim that of the various new telecoms technologies and innovations over the last few decades, there can only be one conclusion drawn the most popular services are usually communications-based not entertainment, not information, but communications. We expect mobile messaging revenues to account for around $65-75 billion in 2008.

What happens when Communism meets Text Messaging?

A Chinese politician, Zhao Linzhong has called for SMS voting to be banned as it "breeds corruption". He said that such activities are serious in nature and affect the morality of the people.

"In some places voting through text messages is even used to choose local famous brands or model workers," Zhao Linzhong, a deputy to the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature of China has said.

Some candidates hire people to vote that help the richer win and deprive the poor of a chance to get elected, Zhao added.

Read all of the details @ Cellular News.