Industry experts plot SMS' future

Mobile industry experts gathered together yesterday afternoon to celebrate the 15th birthday of the text message and to scratch their combined heads as to how SMS will evolve in the future, particularly for the corporate world.

The two certainties about the billions of mobile subscribers worldwide today is that they can make calls and text people, according to Kevin Wood, chief executive of Airwide Solutions, which had a hand in the first-text-sending-milestone and hosted yesterday's celebrations.

"From humble beginnings we couldn't possibly have known the impact it would have on communications... It has fundamentally changed the way the world communicates. 15 years is a long time, yet SMS is still quite a young technology," he said.

Recent statistics from the Mobile Data Association (MDA) highlighted the increasing popularity of text, with more than one billion messages being sent each week. The explosion forced the association to revise its forecast for the year from 48 billion texts to 52 billion.

"To me the penny dropped when I was working in India. I was receiving texts from my colleagues and when I called them back they'd hang up on me. I couldn't understand why but it was the price comparison," said Jonathan Bass, chair of the UK Mobile Marketing Association (MMA).

"I think we need to retain the simplicity and pervasive nature of SMS but I think there's a lot of scope [to improve SMS in the future] actually," said Mike Short, chairman of the MDA, who suggested that businesses in particular have much to gain from the medium as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool in the future.

"Businesses have many alternatives, whether it be email or a secretary, than the individual in the street.... Texting that you've found a rat in your cornflakes is good when there's no email machine around and 'plumber running late' is useful but you need to take it to the next level," he said.

Short later added: "Although I knocked businesses' use of SMS [earlier], more businesses are adopters of SMS but it's still relatively low compared to the consumer boom we saw in the early part of this decade."

The key to whether SMS' star will continue to shine or eventually fade is largely down to looking at, and catering to, how individuals want to communicate, according to Paul Gill, product manager for wholesale and premium messaging at Vodafone UK.

Gill's view of this consumer 'live or die' power was echoed by the other panellists.

"The industry is still struggling to find new services that are anywhere near as popular and profitable as the 15-year old SMS," added John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum, who chaired the panel debate. "SMS is simple, ubiquitous, easy to use and cost-effective. These are the guiding principles that all new services must follow, if they are to succeed on the same scale as SMS."

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