txt? 2right m8 :-)

It is very interesting that text is still very much on the agenda when consumers are asked as to what they want to do with mobile technology. According to Ofcom’s latest study of consumer’s ‘digital’ habits, the regulator found that the average UK consumer now sends 50 texts per week – which has more than doubled in four years – with over 150 billion text messages sent in 2011.

Almost another ninety minutes per week is spent accessing social networking sites and e-mail, or using a mobile to access the internet, while for the first time ever fewer phone calls are being made on both fixed and mobile phones.

Teenagers and young adults are leading these changes, increasingly socialising with friends and family online and through text messages despite saying they prefer to talk face to face.

According to Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2012, 96% of 16-24s are using some form of text based application on a daily basis to communicate with friends and family; with 90% using texts and nearly three quarters (73%) using social networking sites.

By comparison, talking on the phone is less popular among this younger age group, with 67% making mobile phone calls on a daily basis, and only 63% talking face to face.

The report shows that traditional forms of communications are declining in popularity, with the overall time spent on the phone falling by 5% in 2011. This reflects a 10% fall in the volume of calls from landlines, and for the first time ever, a fall in the volume of mobile calls (by just over 1%) in 2011.

These changes in communication habits reflect the rapid increase in ownership of internet-connected devices, such as tablets and smartphones – making access to web-based communications easier.

This shift away from calling marks a significant move in the world of communications. The dream of voice transmission over vast distances has been supplanted by the written word. As our feature this month points out, messaging of all sorts is very much the way the kids (and some adults) like to correspond, be that social, IM, BBM, whatsapp or good ole text.

And that plays very much to the strengths of telemedia, which while its pedigree is in voice calls, has over the past decade harnessed the power of text. And this is something that is set to be a key theme at the forthcoming WORLD TELEMEDIA show in Marbella on 17-19 October. While the show aims to look at the business opportunities around interactive media, marketing, commerce and retail (as well as the latest developments within the telemedia business itself), text is, I suspect, going to feature quite highly.

There is a lot of really cool smartphone and tablet technology out there, but text works and it works for everyone. While judging several categories of the Meffy Awards this month, the role of simple text services to enable m-commerce for the vast majority of people has become clear. I can’t give away any of the details, but I have been surprised at how a lot of the innovation and moreover the successful services entered into the awards this year have used text to let the widest possible number of consumers into the m-commerce world.

This is vital. M-commerce has huge potential to shake up the way all businesses operate, but to do so it has to reach the most people out there and text really does offer that reach. Engaging everyone is becoming the theme of the m-commerce space and WORLD TELEMEDIA MARBELLA is going to showcase how this can be achieved – and point to how sometimes it's the innovative use of existing technology that really holds the key to opening up new markets.

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