A History of SMS Text Messaging
The term SMS stands for Short Messaging Service. This is one of the fastest growing types of communication today. Rising from its identity as a novelty, it is now an industry that commands an $81 billion dollar price tag annually. What is it about this technology that has made it the colossus that it is today?
1992 marked the year of the first SMS message transmitted from Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis from PC to handset. This UK pair soon saw text messaging being achieved via a GSM phone by an engineering student through Nokia. Today there are over 2.4 billion users that are communicating via SMS messaging.
Many think that SMS and text messaging are one in the same. This is simply not true. SMS is the most common type of text messaging, but texting is not the same as SMS messaging. You can send a non-SMS text message, even though SMS is the current industry standard. Just like when someone asks for a "Band-aid" or "Kleenex" they are really looking for a bandage or tissue, SMS messaging has become synonymous with the identity of text messaging. This only illustrates the way that SMS has taken hold in the industry, but it does not truly prove its success.
SMS messaging did not enjoy a fast period of growth in the beginning. Most did not use this service often, and many did not use it at all. The average person with SMS capability in 1995 sent only .4 messages per month on average. Today it would be difficult to imagine how you could go without texting several times in a week. Obviously, it caught on like wildfire in the subsequent years. By the end of 2006 there were millions of text messages being transmitted daily all over the globe.
Phone service providers have a solid business auto reply SMS messaging service. The average price of today's text message is around $0.11. The profit margin on a text message is somewhere around 90%, and it illustrates why SMS messaging is such a big deal to the service providers. The profit is huge, while the investment above the infrastructure is quite minimal.
The original intent for SMS messaging was to be linked to GSM, but today just about all major networks offer similar services. The biggest network, 3G, offers messaging as part of its service as well. Even though the types of messaging are expanding beyond SMS, they will not be undercutting the profitability of SMS messaging anytime soon. There would need to be quite a breakthrough for the industry to sweep SMS under the rug.
The J-Phone Skymail and the Short Mail System for NTT Docomo are the most popular Japanese alternatives to SMS. The capability to email from phones is also becoming quite popular, which utilizes TCP/IP and SMTP protocols rather than SMS. These alternatives afford users and providers alternatives to SMS for their texting.
SMS has changed the landscape in handheld communication, and today it is its own market. You will not see this pioneer disappear anytime soon.

















