Mobile text messages sent during the Spring Festival holidays this year stood at 18.21 billion, a 41.57 percent fall year-on-year, the Beijing News reported Tuesday, citing figures from theMinistry of Industry and Information Technology.

It is the first time a drop has happened with text messages sent during the seven-day Spring Festival holidays.

The report said text messages reached 18 billion in the Spring Festival holidays in 2009, and the numbers kept going up in the following years. In 2013, the number of messages hit 31.17 billion.

Insiders attributed the dramatic drop mainly to the impact of WeChat, an instant messaging application developed by Tencent.