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Submitted by Mike Grenville on Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:23 |
SMS has had such a huge impact and become so pervasive in such a short period of time that it is hard to believe that it is just 15 years since the first ever SMS was sent. The party to celebrate the event in London brought together both the sender and receiver of that historic first SMS.
On 3rd December 1992 a young engineer at Airwide Solutions, Neil Papworth (pictured left), sent the world's first ever commercial text message to Vodafone Director Richard Jarvis (right) at a staff Christmas party. Although text messaging has often been accused of causing irreparable damage to the English language, this did not start with the first message which was simply 'Happy Christmas'.
Intended originally as a pager service, it was some years before users discovered they could send SMS to each other. Neil Papworth, still working for Airwide, was then working for the company as a test engineer and today is Principle Software Engineer said “I was a young engineer working on new communications technologies. We thought SMS was a clever way for a company’s staff to send simple messages to one another. I’d never have predicted that it would spread into the consumer world and become what it is today. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal.â€
SMS Success Factors
"SMS has fundamentally changed the way we communicate" said Airwide President and CEO Kevin Wood opening the 15th anniversary celebration at the ICA in London. "It would be hard to identify something else that has so changed the way we do things in such a short time" he said. Wood identified four key success factors of SMS:
- Every phone has SMS - installed and working and nothing is required of the user to activate it.
- Interoperability - users do not need to know what network the other person is on.
- Utility and ease of use - SMS certainly has utility and can in many cases convey a message better than a voice call and while not perhaps the easiest it is easy enough to use.
- Affordability - it is cheaper than making a phone call
These factors Wood said could be used to evaluate the likely success of other messaging formats and whether for example MIM or MMS would ever replace SMS, as has been suggested in the past. "Predictions of the demise of SMS have proved false time and again" said Wood. "These new messaging applications have been found to compliment SMS, not replace it".
Businesses Are Late Adopters
Looking to the future, Mike Short, MDA Chairman and VP at O2 said while a lot could be done to improve SMS, any future developments need to retain the simplicity of SMS. Short pointed to the progress that had been made, for example the industry does not have the peak problems that used to be a feature of New Year messages.
Short said that text messaging continues to find a wide variety of uses. "Over 300 schools and colleges in the UK have an internal SMS system, and not just for truancy monitoring." There are still many opportunities for SMS in business Short noted. "The business community are usually early adopters but with SMS they are late adopters. Businesses have not adopted CRM which is better with SMS than email."
Subtly Towards IM
Paul Gill, Product Manager, Wholesale and Premium Messaging, Vodafone UK has worked on SMS for over ten years, initially as an engineer. He expressed surprise that SMS could be improved. "I love it the way it is" he said. "Stick in a number and off you go. Try doing that with an IM client on mobile!"
However there was one enhancement, voiced by Jonathan Bass from Incentivated and echoed by the panel
which was to be able to have threaded message conversation. Bass described this as "subtly towards IM, but not IM".
SMS Growth Not Flattening
Asked whether SMS was reaching its peak, Short said that "We should be comparing messaging with the post" said Short. There is free post, express, packages and so on. SMS, IM, MMS are the equivalents and likewise not all types of post are suitable for everyone. The growth is faster than we expected and I do not see flattening out at all. "
More Messages Than Google
Speaking on behalf of the Mobile Marketing Association, Bass agreed saying that he didn't expect to see any decline in SMS in the years he expects to be in the business. "There are more SMS sent in the UK each day than Google searches worldwide" he said. Bass noted that although a recent surge in Google searches has taken it to 200 million a day, it is still not far off the over 1.2 billion text messages sent every week just in the UK.
Wood agreed saying that in emerging markets there continues to be tremendous growth in SMS volumes. With $30 handsets in these markets you can do two things - and SMS is the cheaper." Wood pointed to the mobile growth in China which already has 350 million subscribers with another 6 million added each week. He still saw tremendous opportunity for SMS and pointed to innovations such as Spinvox which delivers voicemail as a text message and Voice SMS as being popular in markets where the language does not lend itself to the T9 keypad.
While the revenue per message may not be what it once was for operators, Wood pointed out that profit has two sides: revenue and cost. "Higher message volumes are delivered at better performance now."
Those Simple Things
"The biggest debate in the industry was whether or not SMS will be superseded and, if so, by what. We have seen SMS continue to grow and not only do we expect this will continue well into the future, but SMS will be one of the underpinning technologies that drives many new uses beyond person-to-person texting. Often it is the simple things that become pervasive" said Wood.
The message from the panel was clear and summed up by Wood who said empathically that "SMS is here to stay."
So Happy Christmas SMS - and many happy returns!
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