Big festive message spike announced

Acision, the world's leading messaging company, today announced that a total of 6.37 billion text messages were delivered through their messaging systems across Asia Pacific over the 2008/2009 Christmas and New Year period. SMS messages formed a large majority of the traffic with 6.36 billion messages, while MMS messages were recorded at 9.54 million messages.

The top five countries with the highest SMS traffic processed over the festive season were the Philippines, again leading the ranking with 2.36 billion messages, closely followed by Indonesia (1.193 billion), Malaysia (1.075 billion) and Pakistan (763 million).

"The festive season still remain a favourite high traffic period for operators and consumers alike. Compared to last year's traffic, this year the total messaging traffic in Asia Pacific grew by 40%. In addition, we are seeing MMS traffic picking up pace across the region with 9.5 million MMS messages processed during this festive season. MMS traffic is bound to increase as consumers become increasingly savvy in interacting with their personal blog sites and applications such as Facebook." said Boudewijn Pesch, Managing Director of Acision, Asia Pacific.

In terms of year-on-year growth, Pakistan traffic volume grew by 253% compared to last year during the same period. Other markets that experienced high messaging growth include Philippines (65%), Australia (57%), Indonesia (27%) and Malaysia (13%).

Philippines

The Philippines has long been known as one of the world's largest SMS markets and now with 66 million mobile subscribers, Filipinos set a new record with an astonishing 2.37 billion text messages sent. This is a 65% increase from the 2007 festive period, reaffirming that SMS still remains the communication mode of choice.

Indonesia

As one of the fastest growing mobile markets in South East Asia with 117 million subscriber and 50% mobile penetrations rate, Indonesian operators processed 1.193 billion messages, representing a 27% increase from the 2007 period.

Malaysia

With 93% mobile penetration rate, the Malaysian mobile market is fast reaching saturation point and for the first time, broke the 1 billion mark for messaging traffic over a two-day period. This was a 13% increase in messaging growth compared to the same period last year.

Pakistan

With 56% mobile penetration rate and 90 million mobile subscribers, Pakistan had the highest messaging traffic growth with 253%, with 763 million messages sent during the New Year period, compared to 216 million from the same period last year.

Australia

With 21 million subscriber and 100% mobile penetration rate, Australia's messaging traffic saw a spike this festive season with 153 million messages, 2.6 million of which was MMS traffic. This represents a 57% growth in messaging volume compared to the same period last year.

"We are seeing a continued demand for robust and reliable SMS infrastructure and high quality end-to-end SMS solutions, as more and more mobile operators place their trust in the Acision's high performance SMSC. Our messaging solutions protect operators' revenue streams as uptake of messaging services continues to grow." Pesch added.

NOTES TO EDITORS

About Acision

Acision is the world's leading messaging company, providing communication solutions for over 300 network operators and service providers globally. For more information please visit www.acision.com

Press Contacts

Radha K Raman
Director, Corporate Marketing, Asia Pacific, Acision
Tel: +65 6505 1021
Email: radha.raman@acision.com

Idran Junadi
Lewis PR
Tel: +65 6534 7250
Email: acisionapac@lewispr.com