Cape Town, 13 Dec 2006
Short message service (SMS) is the most successful mainstream mobile data service to have grown out of the 30-year history of the cellular industry, says international research firm Gartner.
On a global basis, the international research firm predicts the number of SMSes transmitted worldwide will hit 2.3 trillion by 2010. Last year, Gartner estimates, 936 billion SMSes were sent worldwide.
However, Gartner says despite the success of SMS, mobile operators are looking for its successor as they face the prospect of declining margins on basic voice and text services, and lacklustre demand for other data applications.
Nick Ingelbrecht, research analyst at Gartner, says: "Nobody could have predicted the phenomenal success of SMS and the race is on to find its successor. Without a doubt, new services are needed, but a clear leader has yet to emerge from the messaging services currently being deployed, such as mobile IM [instant messaging], video messaging, mobile e-mail and unified and integrated messaging."
Ingelbrecht says the main barriers to consumer adoption of new messaging services are device configuration, service set-up and usability. Carriers will need to address these issues in their service planning, he adds.
He believes pricing is important, saying: "Simple, all-inclusive pricing bundles are well worth considering, although the perceived value of the total package will usually be more important than price alone."
SA is different
Pieter Streicher, MD of local SMS supplier BulkSMS.com, says SA is the only country in the world where the business use of SMS outstrips that for consumers.
"In other countries, the biggest users of SMS are those from the ringtone and logo suppliers to the consumers. However, in SA, several large companies, such as Truworths, Investec Bank and First National Bank, were early adopters of the technology as they saw the business value," he says.
Streicher believes while there are a number of other technologies available, few have been as successful as SMS.
"Every year there are conferences that say how successful SMS has been and then they talk about technologies such as IM, multimedia messaging services, etc. But SMS remains the vehicle of choice," he says.
Streicher says SMS will continue to do well compared to these other technologies that will act to supplement it rather than replace it.
"Take IM: both parties have to be online at the same time and messages are short with two or three words. SMS, on the other hand, allows one to send a far longer message and even if the other party's phone is off at the time of transmission, you generally know they will receive the message once it is turned on," he says.
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