When MMS came, many people predicted that soon SMS will die out like dinosaurs. Well it is good to make conclusion after some time. At least to me it seems we can’t compare SMS and MMS like cassettes and CD’s. MMS is not going to conquer the market. Despite the fact, still a lot of people are saying that SMS is a yesterday’s technology and it doesn’t have any future. Well what could replace SMS then? I can’t see anything at the moment, but maybe in the future …

I stumbled upon an interesting survey today. Synovate has conducted a study, consisted of 1,405 online interviews using a nationally representative consumer online panel of over 1.5 million households to find out peoples’ mobile habits. The identical study was conducted also in 2005 and 2006.

It appears that teens and young adults use text messaging more than any other demographic. People ages 13-24 send and receive the most messages, even more than 50 per week. As you can see from the graph, total usage of text messages has grown significantly and it seems it still has a potential. More important is that people are using SMS more frequently than past years. It shows that behind these numbers are habits and usage intensity, not only the growth of mobile devices.

Here are also some interesting facts from the study:
* 54% of 13-34 year olds use SMS for social networking
* 44% of 13-34 year olds say they use text-messaging for flirting or dating
* 10% of 13-34 year olds said they have broken up with a boy or girl friend using text-messaging

It seems to me that at the moment there isn’t any substitution to SMS. People, especially youngsters, are using this communication channel intensively for different reasons. Maybe in the next decade we will see something that will completely substitute SMS.