CTIA, a wireless industry trade group, found that US cellphone users sent and received more than one trillion texts in the second half of 2010.
This is an 8.7 per cent increase from the prior six months, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
"It's not cool anymore to SMS," explained Eelco Blok, chief executive of Dutch telecommunications company Royal KPN NV.
Despite this, Mark Collins, AT&T's senior vice-president for data and voice products, said he expects high demand for texting plans to persist for a long time.
This is because, he explained, texting allows cellphone users to send instant messages to people with different devices.
Meanwhile, new research by In Stat has suggested that mobile application downloads will reach nearly 48 billion in 2015.
Amy Cravens, senior analyst at the research firm, observed that the prevalence of handset touchscreens is a "significant development impacting the mobile applications market".
Posted by Simon Jones
