French SMS market 2014

France is one of the more robust text messaging markets in the world. French mobile subscribers sent almost 200 billion SMS in 2014, making it the world's 7th largest market.  Despite increasing competition from Internet-based messaging services, SMS and MMS revenues have declined marginally since 2010, from US$3.2 billion to US$2.9 billion while traffic has increased. One reason is the country has one of the lowest SMS termination rates in Europe (1.3 US¢), encouraging use. According to the French electronic communications regulator ARCEP, messaging made up 15.5% of total mobile revenues in 2014, unchanged from 2013. ARCEP will no longer publish messaging revenues from 2015 since bundling and add-on plans have made it more difficult and artificial to allocate revenue to different services.

In terms of usage, France ranks 5th in the world with a mobile subscriber sending an average of 245 SMS per month. CRÉDOC ("Centre de Recherche pour l'Étude et l'Observation des Conditions de Vie" / Research Institute for the Study and Monitoring of Living Standards) carries out annual surveys on ICT use. In 2014 it reported that 74% of the French population 12 years and older sent SMS (equivalent to 83% of mobile telephone users). These users sent on average 101 text per week in 2014, but marked the first time usage dropped. This is more than 1.6 times the calculated figure which includes all mobile subscribers and not just those that text.

ARCEP, Observatory of the Electronic communications market in France, http://www.arcep.fr/index.php?id=12954&L=1
CRÉDOC,  La diffusion des technologies de l information et de la communication dans la société française (2014), http://www.credoc.fr/publications/abstract.php?ref=R317

For another perspective and historical data see: "SMS volume in France grows 30 percent", http://www.netsize.com/sms-volume-in-france-grows-30-percent/

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From World SMS Markets 2014. Features 10 year time series of P2P  SMS traffic for over 50 countries accounting for over 95% of the world SMS market as well as supplementary data for select countries (messaging revenue, SMS users (% of mobile users), SMS termination rates).To order, contact us.

Philippines tops for SMS usage in 2014

The Philippines remains at the top of the SMS usage ranking for 2014. It temporarily lost top spot to Costa Rica for one year in 2011. Text messaging skyrocketed in Costa Rica following the launch of competition in the mobile market in 2011. Statistics on SMS usage in Costa Rica only became available from the regulator after our 2011 SMS market review was conducted. Similarly, SMS data for New Zealand has only recently become available from that country's Commerce Commission which would rank the nation 7th in 2011. By 2014, Costa Rica had fallen to 10th with growing mobile data usage usurping texting.  Malaysia and Turkey fell out of the top ten in 2014, replaced by France and Argentina. SMS usage remains firm in the US, Canada, Venezuela, Indonesia and Pakistan.

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SMS interconnection rates and text message usage in Europe

European countries with low SMS termination rates generate more text message traffic.

According to the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), the simple average SMS termination rate in the region was €2.35 cents (US 3.13¢) per message at the end of 2014 (see figure below). The termination rate is the amount that one mobile operator must pay another mobile operator to deliver a cross-network SMS. In Serbia and Slovenia, there is no SMS termination rate. The highest rate is in the Netherlands (5.60) and the lowest in Denmark (0.15).

SMS termination rate, 1 January 2015, source: BEREC (click to enlarge).

The figure below shows a plot of SMS interconnection rates compared to the number of SMS sent per mobile subscriber per month. The average is around 75 SMS sent per mobile subscriber per month. All of the countries except one with below average SMS termination rates generate more than 75 SMS per subscriber per month. Macedonia does not fit the pattern with a measly 15 SMS per subscriber per month. Only three of the countries with above average SMS termination rates generate more than 75 SMS per subscriber per month.  Of those three, it is likely that most SMS is sent within network, thereby unaffected by the termination rate. France, where the termination rate is one € cent, generates the most SMS traffic per user by some margin.

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