The annual Global Messaging conference held in Cannes last week has underlined that despite the continued onslaught of newer technologies, SMS messaging is continuing to develop.
From airline notifications to an advertising medium its credibility and revenue generating potential is riding high. Indeed, current industry forecasts foresee mobile messaging revenues of $165 billion globally by 2011, 200% higher than previous industry predictions.
Since its inception 15 years ago, mobile messaging has delivered a 6000 per cent return on investment, but the growth phase is not yet over, with markets such as India, North America and China seeing phenomenal traffic increases. Even within the more mature markets of Western Europe and South East Asia, messaging still has huge growth potential.
So how will the humble SMS be developed to fuel this growth?
- Personalising the messaging experience with added functionality relevant to specific consumer and enterprise segments.
- Using partnerships and multi-play strategies to extend mobile messaging to the fixed environment using converged messaging.
- Subsidising mobile internet revenues through messaging integration with interactive web applications such as Facebook and eBay.
- Mobilising enterprise applications.
- Leveraging the mobile marketing opportunities offered by the reach of messaging platforms. The peer to peer capabilities of SMS are widely documented and are used by us all everyday. It is the continual development of Application to Peer messaging that will deliver differentiation within service providers and drive both the volumes and the revenues.