62 SMS and mobile statistics for businesses

The humble text message hasn’t changed in the last two decades. But the surrounding technologies have—newer phones, faster connections, and matured online experiences.

As such, trends and strategies never remain stagnant. It’s hard to predict what will happen, so businesses like yours need to keep tabs on statistics that will help you plan your next move.

SMS and mobile trends continually grow at a steady rate, and it makes us very excited about the future of SMS marketing.

Here are 62 SMS and mobile stats we compiled to help prepare you for 2020.

Messaging Statistics

Short Message Service (SMS)

• Text messages have an 98% open rate [1]
• 90% of recipients open SMS messages within 3 minutes [1]
• Text messages are up to 56 times more affordable than cost-per-click advertising like Adwords [2]
• Text messages have a 10% click-through rate [3]
• The global opt-out rate for SMS is 2.55% [4]
• 85% of surveyed find SMS marketing provides great or excellent value [5]
• 53% of surveyed find that it takes them less than 10 minutes to create a SMS marketing campaign [5]
• 18,100,000 SMS messages get sent every minute worldwide [6]

Rich Communication Services (RCS)

• There are 84 RCS operators worldwide; expected to reach 108 in 2020 [7]
• There are currently 353 million monthly active users globally [7]
• RCS as a messaging platform will be a $74 billion industry by 2021 [7]

Mobile statistics

Mobile subscribers

• There are currently 5.1 billion unique mobile subscribers that can send and receive SMS worldwide [8]
• In 2025, the number of unique mobile subscribers will reach 5.8 billion [8]
• 359 out of the 710 million new mobile subscribers will come from Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by 2025 [8]
• 60% of current mobile connections are from smartphones [8]
• APAC currently has a 54% smartphone penetration rate [8]
• 4G makes up 43% of mobile connections [8]
• 5G connections will make up 15% of mobile connections by 2025 [8]
• The global mobile ecosystem generated $1.1 trillion of economic value in 2018 [8]

General usage

• 24% of Australians prefer their mobile devices for online payments [9]
• 51% of Australians prefer their mobile devices for watching short videos, live posts, and stories [9]
• Smartphones in Australia have a 91% penetration rate [9]
• Australian consumers keep their smartphones for an average of 3.5 years [9]
• 65% of Australians cite trust as their number one consideration when granting app permission [9]
• 89% of Australians denied a mobile app permissions at some point due to privacy concerns [9]
• Americans view their phones on an average of 52 times per day [10]
• 88% of Americans use a second digital device while watching TV [10]
• Time spent on mobile surpassed TV time in the US for the first time [11]
• Americans spend 3.6 hours daily consuming digital media on mobile devices [11]
• 59% of all payments made in the US are digital [11]
• Americans spend 11 hours and 27 minutes per day on connected media [12]
• Out of the 11 hours and 27 minutes, 3 hours are spent on a smartphone [12]
• From 2015 to 2018, website visits from smartphones grew 89% in the US [13]
• In the same period, smartphone visits and page visits decreased, down -7.3% and -8.6% respectively [13]
• A smartphone visit is worth 30% of the value of a desktop visit [13]
• Warmer regions generate more smartphone traffic than colder ones [13]
• Improved mobile data network speeds is predicted to provide an additional $12 billion in revenue per year for online retailers by 2021 [13]

Mobile Shopping

• 35% of total holiday season revenue came from smartphones in 2019, up from 23% in 2017 [14]
• 58% of total holiday season web traffic came from smartphones in 2019, up from 33% in 2015 [14]
• 36% of total holiday season web purchases came from smartphones in 2019, up from 21% in 2016 [14]
• 5% of total holiday season revenue came from tablets in 2019, down from 10% in 2017 [14]
• 5% of total holiday season web traffic came from tablets in 2019, down from 12% in 2015 [14]
• 5% of total holiday season web purchases came from tablets in 2019, down from 10% in 2016 [14]
• Sales from smartphones broke $3 billion on Cyber Monday for the first time [15]
• 90% of sales during 2017 Alibaba Singles Day came from a mobile device [16]
• 69% of shoppers decide where to shop based on vouchers received on their smartphones [17]
• 58% of shoppers use mobile store savings apps to determine where to shop [17]
• 38% of shoppers prefer to get paperless vouchers on their smartphone [17]
• 50% of surveyed Americans in 2017 intend to use their smartphone to research gift ideas for Valentines [18]

Website Traffic

• 46% of people say that waiting for pages to load is what they dislike the most on mobile [19]
• 15.3 seconds is the average time it takes to load a mobile landing page [19]
• Websites that load in 5 seconds see 70% longer sessions on average than ones that load in 19 seconds [19]
• A 100 millisecond delay in mobile landing page load time can drop conversion rates by 7% [19]
• 73% of people say that they encountered a mobile site that takes too long to load [19]
• 79% of shoppers won’t return to a mobile site to buy again if it has poor performance [19]
• Pages that load in 2 seconds have a 9% bounce rate; five seconds have 38% [19]
• Landing pages that load in 1.7 seconds are faster than 75% of the web [20]
• 53% of mobile visitors leave a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load [21]
• If a page loads from 1s to 3s, the probability of a bounce increases by 32% [21]
• If a page loads from 1s to 5s, the probability of a bounce increases by 90% [21]
• If a page loads from 1s to 10s, the probability of a bounce increases by 123% [21]

Other

• Humans have an attention span of 8 seconds; goldfish have 9. [22]

Sources

Final Thoughts

There you have it, 62 SMS and mobile statistics for your business in 2020. As you can see, smartphone usage is on the rise, so there are many opportunities for you to reach your customers with an SMS marketing campaign. It’s also essential to check how fast your website loads on mobile. All of your SMS marketing campaigns will be exponentially more effective if you optimise your website for speed.