Americans prefer texting to talking, report says

Americans prefer texting over talking, according to a new report.

U.S. smartphone users are sending and receiving five times as many texts compared with the number of phone calls each day, according to the International Smartphone Mobility Report by mobile data tracking firm Infomate. In total, Americans spend about 26 minutes a day texting. That compares to spending about six minutes a day on voice calls.

The monthly report tracks cell phone use across 12 countries and measured smartphone users' engagement on calls, texting and chat/Voice over Internet Protocol applications.

Americans' texting habits are in stark contrast to several other countries including India, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil, where people most often use chat or VoIP apps such as Skype, Line and WhatsApp. In more than 75 percent of countries measured, mobile phone users on average spent only six minutes texting.

"Our data reveals that most Americans love texting and would rather send a text than make a call," said Infomate CEO Will Hodgman, adding that in many Asia Pacific and Latin American countries, the data reveal a strong preference for chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Chatting apps are hot in other countries, such as Thailand and Malaysia, where users spend about an hour or more on these applications. In the U.S., however, these apps aren't as popular. This is because mobile carriers have made texting fairly cheap for U.S. users, according to Hodgman. "Outside of this country, many of these chat VoIP services have built services within them so it's no longer about chat, it's about much more. They use Wi-Fi and they don't pay their mobile operator," he added.

Video use is still low across most markets, but in the U.S., Thailand and Qatar, video use is the highest, at an average of about five minutes per day.

The report reveals that during January, Americans spent about 4.9 hours on their smartphones compared with 4.7 hours in December. Americans also consume the most data, at 19 gigabytes a month across cellular and Wi-Fi networks. Thailand was second in overall smartphone use, at four hours per day. Argentines and Brazilians use their smartphones the least, at 1.8 hours per day.