The text message celebrated its twenty secondth birthday previous year. Few applications in the fast moving world of mobile communications can boast such remarkable long life. At this milestone era, the time has come to replicate on the impact of short message service (SMS) and what the future holds for consumers and operators, mutually.
SMS is the most booming service for mobile operators in telecommunications and it has been a big revenue generator. Every year there are stories about ending the 160-character service and every year SMS usage continues to go up as more and more uses are established for this service which has been ignored for a while. The success of SMS has been its straightforwardness, reach, price and steadfastness. All other messaging based applications launched since SMS has struggled to meet the patronizing expectations set by the service and pale in comparison to its achievement.
Industry-related reports have signaled to the opportunity in which SMS volumes and profits will go on to grow on an international basis for at least the next several years. What is going to drive this growth? Precisely, quite a few trends will drive the continued spread out of the service.
Here are some highlights of the Canadian SMS trend:
- Nearly one-half of Canadians (45 per cent) “can’t leave home without their mobile device”
- 53% of mobile users can access the Internet on their mobile device
- 52% of Canadians between 18 to 64 have a mobile device
- 24% of the sites accessed via mobile are not visited on PC
- 3 common mobile media use: store/product info, coupons/promotions, and brand info
- As of late June 2011, over 25 million Canadians are wireless phone subscribers
- Canadians send 199 million text messages per day
- 75% of Canadian households have access to a wireless phone
- Half of all phone connections in Canada are now wireless
- Wireless revenues in Canada totaled $18 billion in 2010