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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 verifying data before refreshing our global maps which we share through a series of hyperlinks across our site.

The global SMS market is projected to reach US$97.94Bn by 2025, encompassing 200+ individual countries or markets, each varying based on factors such as population, teledensity, and SMS usage. In total, around 8 trillion SMS messages were sent globally in 2024.

The SMS Market Place information is designed to assist SMS traders in understanding the intricacies of the global SMS market. Teledensity, defined as the number of mobile devices per hundred people, indicates mobile market penetration. 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. Just over 6 billion of these devices are smartphones, which have internet access. 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 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. 

SMS features vary by market and play a crucial role in determining the type of SMS traffic that can be sent to a country. In the evolving SMS market, Two Way SMS has emerged as a new conversational and interactive business text messaging service. This innovative service allows businesses to both send and receive text messages, facilitating real-time communication and engagement with customers. However, it is important to note that this feature is not supported in the majority of countries. In many developed nations, both Short Codes and Long Codes are available, yet there are some surprising omissions, including Australia, Ireland, and Norway.

In competitive markets, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), a mobile standard for sending messages with multimedia content like images, videos, and audio clips is starting to be withdrawn owing to RCS take up whilst Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has resulted in many mobile numbers being ported from one mobile operator to another, making it essential for SMS traders to verify how this may impact the costs of their SMS traffic. Additionally, Dynamic Message Encoding (DME), is a useful service where a SMS message's encoding scheme changes in real-time based on specific factors to improve efficiency, security, or personalization to determine the character set used for a SMS message based on its content. This process affects the number of characters per segment and the overall cost of sending messages. The transactional and ID SMS processes heavily rely on Two Stage Verification, which is supported in nearly every country across the globe.