Are the days of text messaging over?

Are the SMS gateway and Short Messaging Service (SMS) doomed to join the digital desert alongside punch-cards and floppy-disks? In a recent heated debate, Mobile Data Association members debated the longevity of text messaging.

On one side of the debate, is the criticism that text messaging is too basic a communication medium: limited in expression to 160 characters, non-interactive and limited in its applications. Moreover, due to strong vested interests by mobile operators, who have used text messaging to generate extremely high profits, the cost per character for text message is too high to make it a viable competitor to free offerings, such as email and instant messaging (IM).

A few years ago, it was predicted that text messaging would eventually be superseded by more sophisticated mobile media, such as mobile instant messaging, mobile email and social networking. However, much like radio after the introduction of television, the humble text message has hung in there, both as the base technology for many complex mobile messaging applications and as the source of the majority of mobile data revenues around the world.

This, as the other side of the debate suggests, is because people like text messaging – they understand the technology behind it; it is simple to use and delivery is reliable. Text messaging is a primary mobile handset function that works on all mobile handsets regardless of other limitations, such as absence of a camera or MMS functionality. With text messaging, there is no need for a fancy phone, there is no need to learn complicated access mechanisms – you simply type the message that you want and press send. Moreover, for the developing world, SMS is not affected by internet access limitations or connectivity issues.

More and more people around the world are turning to text messaging as a means to communicate on a personal level, in the workplace, to do their banking, and to interact with their social networking communities. Referred to sometimes as the ‘world-wide e-postal service’, text messaging is not disappearing anytime soon.

The real heart of the issue is that those operating in the professional mobile world perhaps forget that the majority of people and businesses have not even begun harnessing the power of this simple and ubiquitous communication medium. Mobile marketing, mobile voting and mobile payments are still in their infancy. So while the desire for continual innovation is good, text messaging still has a lot to offer and is a ‘gateway’ to other more sophisticated mobile messaging applications.

The potential for many more advanced mobile text messaging applications built around simple and ubiquitous SMS text messaging is huge. In fact, as the market for these applications develops, there will be an increasing need for new SMS gateway APIs that can enable communication between different devices, in order to create seamless communication for the end-user.

Application developers should concentrate their efforts on pushing the limits of the humble text message through the associated SMS gateway API’s – this is not a passing phenomenon.

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