There are now over 285 million wireless connections in the U.S. and the average local monthly bill exceeds $49, according to the CTIA-The Wireless Association's Semi-annual wireless industry survey based on data from December 2009. Some other facts about the U.S. wireless market:
- Wireless service revenues for the last half of 2009 amounted to almost $77 billion--up from a little more than $75 billion in the last half of 2008.
- Wireless data service revenues increased 25.7% from the last half of 2008 to reach more than $22 billion for the last half of 2009.
- Wireless data revenues, which represent what consumers spend on non-voice services, were more than 28% of all wireless service revenues.
- There are now more than 257 million data-capable devices in consumers' hands, up from 228 million at the end of 2008. 50 million of these devices are smart phones or wireless-enabled PDAs and nearly 12 million are wireless-enabled laptops, notebooks or aircards.
- 822 billion text messages sent and received on carriers' networks during the last half of 2009--amounting to almost 5 billion messages per day at the end of the year.
- During the 2009 calendar year, there were more than 1.5 trillion text messages reported on carriers' networks.
- Wireless customers using more than 1.12 trillion voice minutes in the last half of 2009, up 38 billion from the last half of 2008--and breaking down to 6.1 billion minutes-of-use per day.
- More than 24.2 billion MMS messages were reported for the last half of 2009 -- more than double the number from the previous year, when 9.3 billion were reported for the last half of 2008.
