A Look Back

In December 1992, Airwide was responsible for delivering the first ever SMS. The message, delivered on the Vodafone network, said 'Merry Christmas’ and the man who sent it is still working as an engineer for Airwide today.

Neil Papworth, then working for the company as a test engineer and today Principal Software Engineer comments: “I was a young engineer working on new communications technologies. We thought SMS was a clever way for a company’s staff to send simple messages to one another. I’d never have predicted that it would spread into the consumer world and become what it is today. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal.”

Kevin Wood, CEO of Airwide Solutions, says “We are celebrating not only the success of mobile messaging with SMS being fifteen years old, but also the way in which mobile messaging has evolved, how we use it today and where it is headed in the future. Text messaging has come a long way in fifteen years and we are still seeing SMS volumes continue to increase, particularly in countries with developing mobile networks, such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia. The biggest debate in the industry was whether or not SMS will be superseded and, if so, by what.  We have seen SMS continue to grow and not only do we expect this will continue well into the future, but SMS will be one of the underpinning technologies that drives many new uses beyond person-to-person texting.”

To celebrate fifteen years of SMS, Airwide hosted the official birthday celebration in London, which included a panel discussion on the evolution of SMS and the future of mobile messaging. Panel participants included Kevin Wood, CEO of Airwide Solutions; Paul Gill, Product Manager, Wholesale and Premium Messaging, Vodafone UK; John Delaney, Principal Analyst at Ovum; Mike Short, Chairman of the Mobile Data Association and Jonathan Bass, Chair of the UK MMA.

The panel focused on what growth potential remains in mobile messaging and how consumers will adapt to new messaging formats. The panel agreed that text culture is here to stay and, with applications such as mobile advertising, mobile internet, payments and location-based services, text messaging will continue its growth even in a mature market. There was unanimous agreement that global mobile subscribers will drive the continued growth in SMS and, as new messaging technologies are developed, it is the consumer who will decide which format will be successful in fifteen years time.

John Delaney, Principal Analyst at Ovum, said of the discussion: “The industry is still struggling to find new services that are anywhere near as popular and profitable as the 15-year old SMS. SMS is simple, ubiquitous, easy to use and cost-effective. These are the guiding principles that all new services must follow, if they are to succeed on the same scale as SMS.”

To view photos, podcasts and broadcast video of the event please visit the event's microsite.

A Look Into the New Year

Despite SMS being fifteen years old this year, mobile messaging continues its consistent growth, bucking the usual trend for new technologies.

This year Airwide anticipates the US to lead the western world with nearly 730 million messages expected to be sent to ring in the new Year.  The UK also continues to be a leader in the western world with 280 million messages expected to be sent this New Year. Switzerland is the most prolific at texting their friends and families as the clock strikes midnight, sending nearly seven times as many messages at New Year than on an average day. This is closely followed by Greeks, who send just under five times as many messages as a typical day, this year expecting to see 35 million messages at New Year.

The French, on the other hand, seem to prefer the traditional face-to-face greetings at New Year, as they send no more mobile messages at New Year than any other typical day, currently around 51 million messages.

Despite the main celebration in China being during Chinese New Year later in the year, Airwide still expects SMS volumes for the 31st December to 1st January celebrations to beat the rest of the world. A typical day in China sees 1.6 billion texts sent, outdoing the previous leaders the Philippines.

On a more modest level, but still topping previous growth, Telenor in Norway can expect to see 33.4 million SMS New Year messages. Similarly, Czech Republic could send 3.3 times as many mobile messages to greet the New Year as they do on a typical day, with over 55 million expected. Belgium is forecast to double its 2004 New Year figure to 46.7 million messages.

The Three Takeaways From The Latest M: Metrics Survey

by Russell Shaw

According to an M: Metrics Survey released earlier this week, 44.10% of U.S. cell users sent a text message over the three-month period ending September 30. That three-month moving average climbed 2.20% over the previous three month calculation. That would have been June-August.

What’s even more interesting, as gleaned from the facts in the canvass (reproduced in screencap at the top of this post)

Texting is more than six times as popular as mobile IM (7.00% of users) which I take to mean using one or more of those popular IM programs on your handset. So we’d rather text than IM.

Source: http://www.fiercewireless.com/

Texting is more than four times as popular as sending emails via your phone (9.50%). No surprise there, since composing an actual email message on a cell can be a kludgy process. Plus, why take the time to compose an email if all you want to do is write a few words? Isn’t that easier to do via text?

Is mobile gaming declining? Check the chart. Downloads of mobile games are the only category that’s down. Although I’d have to see more of an ongoing pattern to draw a conclusion, it does appear to me that the market could be temporarily saturated. Mobile gamers have all the games (pre-loaded and chosen) that they want for now, and not a lot of new mobile gamers are being added to the mix.

Maybe both groups are waiting for more common 3G?

Predicting the Future of Mobile Messaging Applications and Services

Worldwide, mobile operators are struggling to maintain their current ARPU levels as competition drives ever-lower pricing for voice minutes and text messaging plans.  At the same time, they are trying to determine what is the secret to developing the next generation of applications and services that enable them to attract new customers, reduce churn and to get more value from their existing ones.

But predicting the next “killer app” is not always clear.  And, the mobile industry is infamous for bouncing from one topic to the next in a desperate search for the next great application.  

Predicting the future is the art of seeing the present logically extended.  Given the degree of interdependency, and invested capital, among the key players in the value chain changes in the industry will likely be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Hear Airwide CEO Kevin Wood highlight 4 key factors he sees in predicting the future of mobile messaging applications and services in this interview with Telecom TV.

Season’s Greetings from Airwide Solutions

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