Important SMS Market Information

Telecom AI leverages AI technologies to deliver a comprehensive range of SMS Market and Trade information, enabling SMS traders to make fast, accurate, and informed commercial decisions. We strive to update our information regularly by utilizing our web scraping tools and we verify all data before refreshing our global maps which we share through a series of hyperlinks across our site.

The SMS Market Place information is designed to assist SMS traders in understanding the intricacies of the international SMS market where some 8 trillion SMS messages were sent globally in 2024.

Teledensity, is defined as the number of active landlines and mobile devices per hundred people and indicates market penetration. Its worth noting with the take up of Mobile that the number of Landlines is dropping rapidly. There are now only 877m landlines globally. The annual SMS sent per country measures SMS traffic volume, while the population by country serves as an indicator of potential market size. Globally, there are approximately 8 billion mobile devices, including smartphones and feature phones, as detailed in our Mobiles by Country map. Over 6 billion of these devices are smartphones, which have internet access. Smartphone market penetration varies widely by country whilst the smartphone market share, divided by iOS and Android by country, shows that Android dominates in most regions. Additionally, there are about 2 billion feature phones—GSM-based 'dumb' phones that cannot access the internet or OTT apps—and their numbers are increasing in many developing countries, as highlighted in the Feature Phones by Country map. The SMS market size per annum by country, measured in Euros, varies significantly due to differences in usage, pricing, and teledensity. .

In terms of Mobile network coverage please find the following map that shows the current SMS Market Designation for each country. SMS Market Designation categorises the SMS country market in terms of its maturity and receptiveness to new SMS services. In this section we also look at the country SMS Markets in terms of their current Mobile networks and performance. Additionally we look at the social and economic drivers in each SMS country market.

Nearly all developed countries now operate on 5G 5th Generation Mobile networks whilst the Mobile Index is a measure of a countries environment with respect to SMS Mobile internet adoption.

In terms of Mobile network coverage the following map shows the level of Mobile Network coverage as percentage of land mass per country for all network types. Mobile coverage by country by Mobile Network types have been added for 5G, 4G, 3G and 2G Mobile networks at 2026. There is a general Mobile Network Performance map for each country that shows Mobile network performance irrespective of the supporting Mobile network type. Additional Mobile networks' performance measures in each country vary and includes Mobile Latency, and Mobile Download speeds whilst the Mobile Cybersecurity Index is an indicator of how advanced the SMS economy is for that country.

For the above SMS market analysis to be placed in more context its worth looking at the Literacy Index % per country since users need to be able to read and write to use SMS. To gauge a SMS markets development its worth also checking the number of locally developed Apps per Person and also the take up in Mobile Social Media penetration. Its worth also understanding the Gender Gap in Mobile Ownership since this may influence any SMS Marketing campaigns as will the countries Mobile Ownership, Mobile Affordability and Mobile Online Security indices.

In addition to SMS and RCS, the usage of OTT messaging providers by application is also growing however OTT messaging app usage is largely complimentary to SMS and SMS is firmly established for transactional and promotional messages due to regulation and its extensive global coverage. SMS is utilized by both Smartphones and uniquely by Feature Phones as well. The SMS Market map reflects the number of active SMS users in each country. As technology evolves, operators are beginning to adopt Rich Communications Services (RCS), a modern messaging protocol that enhances standard SMS/MMS by providing advanced features such as high-resolution media sharing, group chats, read receipts, typing indicators, and longer messages. The usage of OTT messaging providers by application is also growing and the next map shows the number of active WhatsApp users in each country. The number of active SnapChat users is also increasing as is the number of global enterprises using the Slack application by country. WeChat map also shows the number of active users by country. The Viber app is one of the earliest OTTs check the map of active users by country. Newer entrants like Telegram and Signal also contribute to the landscape and are growing too.