With over 100pc mobile phone penetration in Ireland we are already a nation of fervent texters and talkers but New Year’s Eve 2007 saw a mammoth number of texts sent by customers of all the mobile operators, with the most sent by Vodafone clientele.
Between New Year’s Eve and Christmas Day Vodafone customers sent a staggering 27m text messages to friends and family while O2 customers sent 12m on New Year’s Eve alone, pointing to the text message (SMS) as the most popular way of wishing seasonal greetings amongst Irish mobile phone users.
While 3 has no figures available at the moment the network did note a sizeable increase in the number of video calls, texts and Skype calls made by their users over the Christmas period.
Vodafone further said that 21m phone calls were made by its customers on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve wishing loved ones well, a record level for Vodafone’s voice traffic as well as text message volume.
Music downloads over Vodafone’s network also did well over the Christmas period with the festive songs Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and All I Want For Christmas by Mariah Carey topping the charts.
Out of Vodafone’s music catalogue of over 600,000 songs Umbrella by Rihanna was the most downloaded of 2007.
Casual games for the mobile phone also did well. Vodafone report that Who Wants to be a Millionaire 3 was the most downloaded of the Christmas period from among the 450 games available from Vodafone live!.
The top-selling phone for the mobile operator this Christmas was the Sony Ericsson K800i amongst men while the Nokia 6300 was the favourite for women. The most popular music device was the Nokia 5200.
By Marie Boran
