Proving that it is resilient even in times of crisis, the number of short messaging services (SMS) in Asia Pacific and Japan are on track to reach 1.9 trillion messages in 2009, a 15.5-percent increase from 2008.

Based on a new report from analyst firm Gartner, SMS volumes in 2010 are forecast to surpass 2.1 Trillion, a 12.7 percent increase from 2009.

Gartner analysts said that messaging traffic and revenues continue to be driven by new subscribers in developing markets.

“Strong organic growth continues in Asia’s developing markets, with marginal subscribers turning to low-cost messaging as an entry-level service,” said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner.

“In the mature markets of the Asia Pacific region, SMS has seen sustained healthy growth as a result of steady price declines and increasingly generous SMS and data bundles.”

The impact of the financial crisis has been muted in Asia Pacific and resulted in little impact on the estimates and forecasts for 2009, the report noted. Carriers are expecting somewhat slower messaging traffic increases going into 2010, but in many cases there will still be double-digit-percentage rises.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) traffic picked up in Asia during 2008, driven by reduced prices and increased uploading of pictures to social networking sites.

“‘Big bucket’ or large inclusive SMS and MMS bundles will also increase traffic by lowering the price barriers to usage,” said Gupta.