I found a ridiculous report today that says "Texting Finally More Popular Than Calling Among U.S. Mobile Users" citing a study that says "As of the second quarter of 2008, a typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends or receives 357 text messages a month, compared to placing or receiving 204 phone calls". That may seem like a huge spread, but it's really not, and I would venture to say calling is still more popular.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "But Ammon, look at the numbers, text messaging has a CLEAR and SUBSTANTIAL lead in usage numbers. Man you are so stupid for not believing this study." Relax, man. Here's my reasoning: A text message is not a conversation. It is a phrase, if you're lucky it can be a sentence or two, or it can be a one word response. The content of a text message would take 2-30 seconds to say in a call.
So, how many text messages would it take to fill a 5 minute phone conversation? Let's say every text would take 30 seconds. That would be 10 text messages. Divide that by two (because this is per person, not both parties involved), and you have 5 text messages. So if each of those 204 phone calls were 5 minutes long, it would take 1020 text messages. That is a lot more than 357.
Feel free to reject the last paragraph as I mostly made it up on the fly. My point is, I reject the study.
EDIT: I just realized the study said "a typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends or receives 357 text messages a month" That would mean you wouldn't have to divide by two. So the 5 minute conversation is actually 10 texts, and the 204 phone calls equate to 2040 texts. This solidifies my point even further.
The study I would like to see is one that takes an average length of all text messages, does some sort of magic that decides how long it would take to speak the content, and compares that to how many MINUTES were used by cell phone users. Then we would have a study we can think about. And I suspect the audible connection would have a runaway victory.
One source:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/us-finally-catc.html
