The ten digit mobile phone keypad is dying.  At the cell phone industry's biggest North American trade show, USA Today noted that only a handful of new phones have the traditional numeric keypad.  Almost every cell phone coming to market has some sort of QWERTY keyboard or touch screen instead.

I guess this shouldn't really come as a surprise given the number of people who agreed with me yesterday that they prefer e-mail to voice mail.  Show organizers say the trend away from numeric keypads is a direct reaction to a trend in the business toward e-mail and text messaging.  US mobile phone customers send a trillion text messages last year -- three times as many as in 2007.