February 9th, 2024, Lesley Simeon
Sending and receiving voice notes was once a complete novelty for mobile phone users and to some it remains the preserve of the almost criminally insane. But how many of us are sending and receiving voice notes today – and do we prefer it over tapping out or reading a long message?
A recent YouGov survey polling consumers across 17 markets reveals that text messages are still preferred over audio messages by a significant margin but that audio messaging has become much more widely acceptable.
A majority of consumers prefer sending text messages (66%). Fewer than one in ten consumers (7%) would opt for sending messages in audio format while two in ten (21%) favor text and audio messages equally.
Europeans prefer text messages over audio, more strongly than Asians do. Britons are the most likely across markets (83%) to prefer sending text messages, followed by Danes (80%) and Swedes (78%). Within Europe, consumers in Spain are the least likely to agree. Nonetheless, more than half of all Spaniards (54%) say they prefer sending text messages. In Asia, Indonesians are the most likely to say the same (66%).
Conversely, the least likely across markets to prefer sending messages via text are consumers in the UAE. Nearly two in five consumers here (38%) say so. Consumers here are, as you would expect, also most likely to say they prefer sending audio messages.
They are followed by those in Mexico (13%) and Spain (13%). Danes (2%), Swedes (3%) and Singaporeans (3%) are the least likely to say they prefer sending audio messages.
Hong Kongers account for the largest proportion of consumers across all markets we survey (46%) to say they prefer sending text and audio messages equally.
In the US, most Americans prefer sending text messages (68%), and less than one in five (18%) prefer sending both text and audio messages equally.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, data about consumers’ preferences when it comes to receiving messages aren’t too different from how they prefer sending messages.
Danes (77%) and Britons (77%) lead in their dedication to the text format even when it comes to receiving messages. In Asia, Singaporeans are the most likely (67%) to say they prefer receiving text messages over audio. On the other hand, a third of consumers in the UAE (33%) prefer receiving text messages – the least likely across markets. Consumers from UAE also account for the largest proportion of those across markets who prefer audio messages (17%), as well as those who prefer text and audio messages equally (46%). An equal proportion of consumers in Hong Kong (46%) also prefer receiving both, text and audio messages, equally, followed by Indians (40%).
In the US, Americans prefer receiving text messages (65%) more than audio ones (6%).
Within Asia, Indians lead (8%) in their preference for receiving audio messages, over text. It is also a market where four in ten consumers prefer both text and audio.
Italians are the most likely in Europe to pick audio over text (10%) when it comes to how they’d prefer receiving messages, followed by Germans.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 500 and 2001 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in November 2023. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.
Photo by Tim Samuelon Pexels