According to a survey commissioned by T-Mobile, only 26% are planning on using social media to share Christmas messages on 25 December, compared to 62% planning to make a call and 55% send a text message.[1]
Further to this, T-Mobile’s own forecasts predict that users on the network will send a record-breaking 95 million texts on Christmas Day this year - an average of 3.9 million per hour[2]. That’s an increase of over 15 million from 2010 where over 79 million texts were sent. As well as sending millions of texts, T-Mobile anticipates that Brits will send over 750,000 festive picture messages via MMS, and 33.5 million calls are predicted for the big day - a jump from the previous record of 30 million in 2010.
A T-Mobile spokesperson said: “2011 has definitely been the year of the smartphone – we have seen an exponential increase in data usage over the past two years, with growth of over 250% recorded in urban areas. However, it’s always interesting to see that when it comes to family time over the Christmas season – Brits are logging off and reverting back to more personal methods of spreading the festive cheer.”