Monday, July 15, 2002		Feature

Women use SMS more than men
Tribune News Service

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 per cent of the mobile user SMS on their device, while in Mumbai it is the least at 60 per cent.

However, the number of messages sent per day is relatively higher in Bangalore than any other city. Interestingly, the 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 a difference based on gender. It was found that women send more number of messages than their male counterparts. 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.