2007

I’m back from vacation, and busier than ever catching up on everything I missed while away. Between work, feeds, e-mails, and other writing, it’s a wonder I have any time to be thinking about what to post. But this weekend will give me plenty of opportunity to create a worthwhile read, and by Monday I’ll have it finished, with hopefully a few lesser commentaries as I’m catching up over the weekend.

Amazingly enough, according to my Feedburner stats I’ve actually gained subscribers while away(maybe I should shut up more often?), so thanks to everyone reading, and especially to those who have been leaving comments and sending e-mails. If you haven’t heard back from me yet, expect to soon.

In the meantime, here’s an interesting number: 620,000,000,000.

That’s the number of SMS text messages sent during the first quarter of 2007. The revenue derived from that is quite impressive, but less impressive is the amount of revenue made from non-SMS data transfer fees. $11.3 billion from non-SMS data transfer out of $34.3 billion total. While that’s still a lot of money, it’s relatively small compared to what it could be if data transfer fees were lower. Lower fees would be more than made up for as the volume of use increases.

All stats via Mike Grenville at 160Characters, with a couple of interesting graph breakdowns showing which mobile operators are making the most money from non-SMS data transfer fees.