As more and more people turn to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to let their friends and family know every minute detail of their lives, text messaging is slowly, but surely, becoming passé.
So far, it hasn't had a big impact on U.S. telco giants AT&T and Verizon Wireless. But take a look at what's happening in one part of Europe. On Christmas Eve in 2010, Sonera, the No. 1 mobile carrier in Finland, saw nearly 11 million texts delivered on its network, as Tero Kuittinen aptly points out in a column for Forbes. But just a year later, that number was only 8.5 million, a decline of more than 20 percent. Christmas Day actually saw growth from one year to the next, but that's likely explained by a winter storm that knocked out power in parts of Scandinavia.
Texting appears to be declining, Kuittinen says, in markets where it first took off back in the 1990s. For example, Hong Kong reportedly saw its number of texts on Christmas Day decline year-over-year by 14 percent. Those places where the phenomenon caught on a little later are yet to see the drop.
As Apple and Google further integrate Facebook, Twitter and social media into their systems going forward, carriers in America and other parts of the world will want to keep a close eye on their revenues, which could very well decline. Statistics show as much as 20 percent of carrier revenues are derived from text-messaging.
