Poll: Europeans more likely to text holiday greetings, especially 'Happy New Year'

Poll shows Americans find Christmas more important

- Gary Thayer, Editor

Dec. 21, 2005 -- (MobileVillage) -- If you haven't yet sent out your holiday cards, you may consider texting a greeting on your mobile phone by using SMS (short message service). Holiday texting is a growing trend, according to AOL's Tegic Communications, which sells predictive text entry software for phones.

To come up with its findings, Tegic polled mobile phone users five countries in Europe and the U.S. to find out whether they have/would send a "Merry Xmas" text message.

Below are the "yes" stats:

* U.S.: 39%
* U.K.: 56%
* France: 66%
* Germany: 79%
* Spain: 88%
* Italy: 91%

In addition, when mobile users were asked whether they have/would send a "Happy New Year" text message, below are the "yes" stats:

* U.S.: 35%
* France: 85%
* Germany: 88%
* Spain: 90%
* Italy: 92%

Tegic says that its software allows users to cut down on the number of keystokes needed to text messages - for example texting "Merry Xmas" takes 21 key presses to do so using multi-tap, but just 10 using Tegic's T9 application.

Tegic also recently released what it calls the "T9 Buzz Words of 2005" which the company added to the T9 dictionary:

* Lifehack - a tool or technique that makes some aspect of one's life easier or more efficient

* Mashup - new information created by combining data from two different sources

* Placeshift - to redirect a TV signal so the viewer can watch a show on a device other than his or her television

* Playlistism - judging a person based on what songs are on the playlist of his or her digital music player

* Podjack - to plug the cord of one's digital music player into the jack of another person's player to hear what the person is listening to

* Puggle - a dog bred from a pug and a beagle

* Sideload - to transfer music or other content to a cell phone using the cell phone provider's network

* Vlog - a blog that contains mostly video content

* Vodcast - a video podcast

* Ubersexual - a heterosexual man who is masculine, confident, compassionate and stylish

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