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There is very little doubt that there may not be a company in the world that is better at self promotion than Apple (News - Alert). The computer giant allows for people to get all worked up about its new products and then releases them at just the right time in order to reap the biggest rewards. They did that impressively with the iPhone (News - Alert) 5 and are doing to a somewhat lesser degree with the fourth generation iPad.

With the iPhone, one of the things the company believed users could do would eliminate the need for much in the way of text messaging, especially if those users’ friends were all grabbing up iPhones as well. It appears that the company was spot on if usage statistics coming out of Finland (of all places) can be believed. A new study out of that country shows that from October of last year, and August of this one text messaging using the iPhone has dropped 14 percent. Over that same time period the study shows that mobile data usage with the iPhone grew by 68 percent.

The reason this study seems to carry some weight is because Finland has traditionally been a pretty heavy SMS text messaging country even while most of Europe dropped off. France and Finland both had actually been going in the opposite directions of countries like Spain and the Netherlands, but the study shows that Finland at least appears to be joining the “cool kids” who are using messaging options other than SMS when it comes to the iPhone.

Perhaps the neatest thing about this particular study is that it was largely carried out using an iPhone app known as the Ratemizer. This application tracks the usage habits of iPhone owners and it is that app that showed a steep drop in SMS texting and that huge rise in mobile data use.