SMS, She Is Dying
- July 27th, 2007
- 6 Comments
Research firm Gartner is predicting that SMS will become obsolete or at the very least become insignificant by 2010. Duh. The report may only apply in Australia, but it isn’t very hard to see the correlation here in the U.S.
Mobile e-mail is becoming more prevalent every day with Joe Shmoe picking up a BlackBerry or some other smartphone with e-mail capabilities. You may be led to believe differently with Verizon reporting 10 billion text messages sent/received in June, but that’s only because they charge you up the ying-yang for e-mail usage.
In any case, cheaper texting plans have probably cut down minutes used, it has for me, but e-mail is the easiest way to go and it’s cheaper. Not everyone can whip out their mobile phone at work and text away without managers getting fussy, but you sure can e-mail to your hearts content whenever you please.
For SMS, the days are numbered [Sydney Morning Herald]
Seán (Who am I?)
1 year ago
In Spain, that’s not the case… online access is still incredibly expensive so I wouldn’t see SMSes disappearing anytime soon…
Mr. Crash (Who am I?)
1 year ago
In AUSTRALIA thats not the case…
Most times - mobile email is only available on a plan - and costs you more. There is a large slab of the population who use prepaid accounts over here and while I’d imagine they aren’t perhaps the main target users of mobile email, they are the ones sending a lot of the text messages.
Another hurdle that has to be dealt with if you want any adoption by the younger or lazier audiences (sometime they’re the same - like in my case) is the set up. While I speak enough geek to work out how to set up pop forwarding on my gmail account and punch in the right settings on my phone, I’m seriously doubting whether a lot of my friends can. People who use hotmail or yahoo, I don’t even know if they can do pop forwarding on that.
I like that the SMS is attached to my phone.
I like that SMS is simple and quick, along with being informal and no kind of graduated scale by which i have to decide whether a quick single phrase response is not.
I like that someone who emails me *can’t* send something to my phone - anyone else here get spam?
vic berggren (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I agree with the other commenter’s, I don’t see this happening anytime soon and I would think that 2010 is way too soon, the people on the street are in full blown texting mode and that’s not changing.
It was reported that in June Verizon logged 10 billion SMS messages:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/07/verizon_wireles_6.html
Anyone know that their volume was for the trailing 12 months on their SMS?
Bassem B. (Who am I?)
1 year ago
That’s kind of a silly claim. In many countries, I would say half the world, SMS is still the predominant way to communicate via mobile technology, even surpassing phonecalls. This certainly applies to third-world countries, where push email technology is not yet available, and phone calls are relatively expensive.
SMS is light, accessible and universal. It’s not going away anytime soon.
vic berggren (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Can you point us to the Gartner Report that you’ve referenced Patrick?
donoho (Who am I?)
1 year ago
IMO, Email is not and will not displace SMS. It’s like saying full blown conversations will replace passing hellos. They have very different usages, much like IM and email. Now if web connectivity improved phone based IM, then maybe I could see SMS being displaced.