The number of text messages sent to mobile phones worldwide has reached one billion a day and demand is accelerating every month, a mobile operator's industry group said on Friday.
The GSM Association, which groups the world's wireless firms, including the largest, Vodafone, raised its forecast for the number of messages to sent in the full year to 250 billion from an earlier estimated 200 billion.
Text messages, which were initially embraced by teenagers looking for ways to limit their phone bill, are mainly sent from mobile phone to mobile phone.
But an increasing number are sent from Internet terminals and computers, often by businesses and telecom companies themselves, and income from messaging is expected to reach $18.9 billion worldwide in 2001, according to research group Ovum.
Microsoft recently announced it will offer a service allowing users of its Hotmail service in Europe to have web-based email forwarded to their mobile phone via strings of Short Messaging Services (SMS).
SMS is the official name for short text messages. Texting is big in Europe with the Nordic countries particularly to the fore, but is growing rapidly in Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
