The numbers are in: New Year’s Eve set a new high water mark for text
messaging traffic powered by RealNetworks, breaking the previous record set
just days before on December 25th.

On New Year’s Eve, RealNetworks processed more than 1 billion incoming
and outgoing text messages—1,054,882,146 to be exact. This more than
doubled the amount from New Year’s the previous year.  A similar
trend was seen in Christmas day messages, which totaled 990,000,000 for 2007
and were less than half that for 2006.

These record-breaking numbers prove the point that has been generating early-2008
buzz: text messaging and the countless other mobile entertainment and
personalization services offered by major carriers continue to grow in
popularity.  RealNetworks, the company that powers these services for 78
communications service providers worldwide, also got a snapshot of how much the
popularity of ringtones has grown since last year’s holiday season.
More than 200,000 ringtones were purchased on Christmas 2007, compared to
175,000 the previous year.  

This increase in holiday ringtone downloads is in line with the general trend
Real has seen in ringtone purchases, with nearly 10 million purchased between
July and August 2007, compared to just over 6 million for the same period in
2006.  High download rates during the summer months correlates to kids
being off from school—as reported by Deloitte & Touche in the new
study, “State of the Media Democracy,” Millennials (consumers ages
13 to 24) lead the way in terms of embracing mobile technologies, with 46
percent considering their mobile handsets as entertainment devices.

The increase in ringtone sales goes somewhat against the
assessment of the recent New York Times article, “Global Market for
Cellphone Ring Tones Is Shrinking,” which notes that in some countries,
the percentage of mobile subscribers buying ringtones has fallen over
time.  It also states, however, that the value of mobile games sold has
increased significantly since last year.  While it is true that the
popularity of individual services may ebb and flow, there is no doubt that
mobile entertainment and personalization services in general are on an upward
swing that shows no signs of slowing.  This is a trend that RealNetworks
is well positioned to take advantage of, offering a wide variety of services,
including music on demand, video on demand, games, ringback tones and
multimedia ringback services, in addition to the services mentioned
above.