Chennai tops the list in SMS penetration: IDC Survey

A recently concluded survey by IDC, revealed that proportion of mobile users using SMS for communication in Chennai outstrips all other cities. In Chennai, around 80 percent of the mobile user SMS on their device, while in Mumbai it is the least at 60 percent.

However, number of messages sent per day is relatively higher in Bangalore than any other city. Interestingly number of SMS sent per day in Chennai is the lowest with an average of 1.6 messages though there is more number of SMS users. There is also difference based on gender. It was found that female sends more number of message than their male counterpart. The average number of messages sent by a female mobile user is around 4.2 per day. The survey reveals that SMS is used as a cheap mode of communication.

The study also focussed on various usage dimensions of mobile telephony. The average incidence of making a call is 4 times higher than the silent messages like SMS. The study tried to segregate the users by way of their spending pattern. The average number of calls made by those users whose monthly bills exceed Rs 1000 is 13 while those below make just half the number of calls. Similarly users who spend more also send more number of SMS messages than those who spend less. 

The average duration of a call made per day, in these five cities, is around 2 minutes. Mobile users in Bangalore talk the least with just 1-minute per call whereas Delhi mobile users talk the maximum with 2.4 minutes. 

The study was recently conducted in the month of June this year in top five cities i.e. Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata among SEC A1 users of mobile phone. The selection of the respondent was on a random basis with users in different age groups.