K: Y'all sent 740 billion text messages in the first half of 2009

So CTIA does this little survey twice a year just to measure how well (or poor) the wireless industry is doing. The result of its latest survey just hit the wires, and what immediately jumped out at me was this stat: around 4.1 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) text messages per day (!) were sent in the first half of 2009. I wonder how many of those are the always useful “k” message.

That of course works out to some 740 billion text messages over the course of those six months.

Other things that may pique your interest:

• Some 1.1 trillion minutes were used in the first half of the year (or 6.9 million minutes per day)

• There’s 246 million mobile data capable devices out there. You know, phones, 3G cards for your laptop, etc.

• Carriers made $19.4 billion in gross revenue from data plans in the first half of the year. Again, that’s gross revenue, so you’d have to take into account how much it costs to keep everything working, salaries, etc.

That does seem to be about it. And really, all of that could have been summed up with one giant bullet point: the wireless industry is doing pretty well for itself.