Press Release
December 2004    

The CEO of mobile data communications company SMS.ac, Inc. says he believes that 2005 will be a breakout year for wireless data consumption in the United States. At a wireless industry dinner on Tuesday, Michael Pousti said that domestic multimedia and text messaging activity has increased significantly during the past few years and he predicted that the biggest growth for the industry is yet to come.

"According to U.S. messaging figures, approximately 14 billion text (SMS) messages were sent domestically in 2003,'' said Pousti. "Various industry reports indicate that mobile messaging will reach approximately 25 billion by the end of 2004. And because of the explosive growth SMS.ac is seeing domestically with respect to the exchange of multimedia and textual communications, I am confident that the aggregate number of mobile messages sent within the U.S. will nearly double to 45 billion, in 2005.''

In June 2001, a paltry 30,000 text messages were sent throughout the U.S. Since that time however, the number of messages sent to mobile handsets here has skyrocketed. A staggering 2.8 billion mobile messages were sent in June 2004 alone, according to the CEO of CTIA, Steve Largent.

With tens of millions of registered users in more than 170 countries, SMS.ac is the most popular gateway for mobile phone users worldwide. SMS.ac is also the largest community of mobile phone users in existence. IDC, one of the world's premier market intelligence and advisory firms covering the information technology and telecommunications industries, recently named SMS.ac Inc. to its prestigious "10 Emerging Wireless Players to Watch'' list for 2005.

"There are a number of elements that will contribute to the amazing acceleration of domestic mobile data consumption in 2005,'' continued SMS.ac's Pousti. "First, the word is getting out. Anywhere, anytime communication is now demand by all generations of mobile users that no longer want to be tethered to their PCs. Additionally, more advanced and easier-to-use handsets are making their way into the marketplace. As a result, the sheer number of mobile subscribers that are discovering and consistently using mobile messaging is increasing at rates that have exceeded all expectations.

"The number of mobile applications at-the-ready for wireless consumption is increasing every month,'' said Pousti. "Bearing all this in mind, I believe that 2005 will see the U.S. emerge as the one of the top three mobile data consuming nations in the world, measured by data volume. That means awesome growth. And the realization of those phenomenal numbers, along with the revenues they generate should quiet the skeptics that earlier questioned whether mobile messaging would ever happen in the U.S.''

While increases in the consumption of mobile data are encouraging, the U.S. still lags far behind China in terms of the number of overall messages sent. According to figures recently released by China's Ministry of Information Industry, cellular phone users in that country sent 176 billion text messages in the first 10 months of this year.