SMS in South East Asia: 3 different paths

Cultural, calligraphic  & technical factors at play in explaining diverse text messaging markets in region

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) account for over a quarter of global SMS traffic. At the same time, they have widely diverse SMS markets that can be classified into 3 groups: 1) Indonesia and the Philippines where texting is a way of life and SMS revenues remain vital to the industry; 2) Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand where 4G networks and smartphone adoption is pulling cellphone owners to use Over The Top (OTT) alternatives for messaging; and 3) Indochinese nations where SMS never really took off with a key factor being limited availability of local character sets on cellphones.

Indonesia and the Philippines are in a class of their own both within ASEAN and the world. Filipinos send more text per user than any other country on the globe while Indonesia has the largest volume of SMS traffic in the region. Texting is a vital part of mobile operator revenues in these two countries generating US$ 3.5 billion in 2014 and accounting for almost 2/5ths of the total in the Philippines and a little over 1/5th in Indonesia. Though there has been some substitution by Internet-based texting applications, there has not been a wholesale decline, thanks in part to smart operator management trading extremely low text prices for volume. SMS is a way of life in both countries where as far back as 2008 it was cited as a “killer application” in the Philippines (SIDA, 2008, The innovative use of mobile applications in the Philippines) and the 2010 Indonesian census is referred to as the "SMS Census" (PRB, 2010, Communication Surprises in the 2010 Indonesian Population Census). The use of the Latin alphabet in these countries has also been a major factor driving texting. 

The smartphone revolution is impacting text markets in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. This trio has the highest smartphone penetration in the region and at 88% of the population, Singapore has the 2nd highest smartphone penetration in the world, after the UAE. While both Malaysia and Singapore had high texting usage in the past—partly due to widespread use of English and in the case of Malaysia, the Malay language using the Latin character set—it has been declining rapidly since 2010. SMS never really took off in Thailand due to the calligraphic challenge of typing Thai on a small cellphone. Any hope of it doing so effectively died when operators were awarded 3G frequency and rapidly migrated their subscribers to the new networks to avoid paying revenue sharing fees with the government. Thai operators have been actively promoting smartphones and SMS is estimated to account for only around US$100 million of total mobile service industry revenue in 2014.

Use of Khmer on cellphones in Cambodia

Indochina nations such as Cambodia and Laos suffer from the same problem as Thailand in that they not use the Latin alphabet. Worse, since they are relatively small markets, there was not a major effort to include Khmer and Laotian on older cellphones. Only around a third of Cambodian cellphones were Khmer-enabled in 2013. This figure had risen to almost two thirds in 2015 thanks to rapid adoption of smartphones but means that users will use Internet-based messaging rather than SMS. Another problem is that so many Cambodians were used to not having Khmer on their older handsets they just assume that smartphones don't either (see: Mobile Phones and Internet in Cambodia 2015). Countries in Indochina also persist with higher off-net pay as you go SMS tariffs. This detracts from the major benefit of SMS--it can be sent to any subscriber and not just those that have downloaded an Internet messaging application.

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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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Top SMS 2009

The Philippines is still on top in the latest ranking of leading SMS countries. There have been some interesting changes since the last benchmark (see 2003 ranking). Text messaging has tripled in the Philippines with a whopping 609 SMS per subscriber per month in 2009. The USA enters the ranking at second with skyrocketing use of text messaging from just 8 per user per month in 2003 to 408 in 2009. This can be attributed to add-on packages for SMS where users get unlimited text messaging for a flat monthly fee. Singapore, Malta, Croatia and Norway have dropped out of the top ten replaced by Venezuela, Lithuania and Portugal. Another drop out is Japan where text messaging has been eclipsed by mobile e-mail. Care must be taken in interpreting these statistics since they may not reflect a relatively high intensity of non-voice use because users are more "tech-savvy".  In many instances, SMS is used because it is a cheaper alternative than a voice call. When the price of voice calls decline, the use of text messaging often goes down.

Top 10 countries by SMS per user per month, 2009

Note: Philippines and Indonesia based on largest mobile operators. USA refers to H2 2009. Ireland refers to Q4 2009. Korea refers to South Korea's KTF at February. SMS per user per month calculated as: Number of SMS for 2009 / Average mobile subscriptions in 2009 / 12. 
Suggested citation: "Top SMS 2009." www.ictDATA.org. IBSN: 000-1-05-2010. http://www.ictdata.org/2010/10/top-sms-2009.html. [Extracted dd-mm-yyyy].
Contact for additional information about this table or purchasing data set covering additional countries and years.

See 2011 update: http://www.ictdata.org/2012/06/sms-update-2011.html

Top SMS countries, 2003

The background for this chart stems from an April 2004 article stating that Germans led the world in SMS usage in 2003 (See "Germans are world SMS champions"). None of the statistics in the article were correct. For example, the article stated that Germans--who are not even ranked in the top ten by the number of SMS sent per subscriber per month--led the world by sending 200 million SMS a year. This is less than 1 SMS per subscriber per month and is clearly wrong. The German telecom regulator reported that Germans sent 20 billion SMS in 2003, or some 27 per subscriber per month. This only ranks Germany number 22, far behind the Philippines, where the average mobile subscriber sends some 200 text messages a month ranking that country tops in the world. This rectifies an earlier misunderstanding in the Asia Pacific Mobile Multimedia Outlook report where Singapore had been ranked ahead of the Philippines. This was picked up by one news article Tops in text: Singaporeans edge Pinoys. It turns out that the Singaporean data included both SMS sent and received. The data are now correct in the chart to show only sent text messages.
See 2009 update.