Silver Talkers drive up photo messaging usage

PHOTO MESSAGING seems to have taken off at last and it’s the Silver Talkers who are driving the change. Their offspring must have helped them get MMS to work on their mobile phones.

According to figures just released by the succinctly named Comscore M:metrics, in the European market the strongest growth in users of photo messaging/MMS is coming from those aged 55 years or over.

In the States, Silver Talkers are obviously much younger because the highest growth was in the 45 to 54 years old bracket. However, more Europeans own camera-equipped phones than their American cousins. The percentage is 66 per cent in the States compared with 78 per cent in Europe.

The figures also show that US citizens tend to send most of their picture messages over the summer holidays in July and August.

Which has all prompted Comscore's Mark Donovan to claim that, "The cameraphone could replace the postcard as the preferred mode to say 'wish you were here', as even parents and grandparents are snapping and sending photos from their mobile devices."

The most intriguing aspect to the figures which Comscore has just put out concern the rise is the number of those reporting to have received an advertisement via SMS.

In the UK the figure is 36.2 per cent compared to just 3.2 per cent who claim to have downloaded a ringtone. So ringtones are dying while the number of Brits having used their phones to listen to music is encouragingly high at 20.7 per cent.

Sadly that doesn't mean they've necessarily purchased music via an OTA (over-the-air) download, though. µ