July 09th, 2007 – London, UK - At the Global Messaging Congress in Monaco this year it became clear that a change has come over the mobile messaging industry. For years now everyone has been looking for the next big thing, for the technology or service that will perform like SMS and become a mass market proposition. For a year or so people thought it was MMS, then they thought it was Instant Messaging, some even thought it was mobile TV. It seems, however, that they were all wrong. If the new feeling that was running through this year’s Congress is correct it seems that the next big thing - the next SMS - is in fact SMS!

Whichever way you look at it SMS has got a lot going for it. 60% of all phone numbers are now SMS enabled. That’s not just mobile numbers, that’s all phone numbers everywhere, fixed and mobile and that’s a huge installed base. Every mobile operator wherever they are in the world will back up the importance of SMS – for years now its been second only to voice in terms of revenue importance and that’s something that’s not going to go away over night.

The future of SMS in terms of installed base is also looking rosy. Whilst the technology has traditionally been limited to the mobile world its increasingly moving towards fixed line environments as well. Consumers used to the convenience and speed of texting are wanting to do it from their landline and corporates wanting to engage with consumers are looking to have a single voice and text contact number. At the moment, when you make a voice call to a number, whether mobile, landline or whatever, you implicitly expect it to just work. The same should be true of text – whatever the number it should be able to manage more than just talk. If this trend continues, as it looks set to do, that 60% figure could be looking pretty small very soon!

The mood at GMC was essentially a recognition of the dominant position that SMS has achieved. With that recognition comes the realisation that, if SMS is here to stay and there isn’t a next big thing, then we need to look at new ways of creating additional revenues from SMS services. Rather than continually trying to sell new products to consumers that it seems they don’t want, why don’t we sell more of the thing that they clearly do want! It’s a significant mind shift for the industry – rather than looking for groundbreaking new applications, everyone is now working out how to make the current industry workhorse generate extra revenues.

Examples of this trend were clearly visible in the displays at the Congress this year. There were various SMS storage and forwarding services, Voice SMS concepts which are already gaining ground in marketplaces with lower literacy rates, SMS printing and group SMS management products. On top of this there’s a whole range of areas in the enterprise where SMS is really taking hold – whether its application-to-person communications such as flight times, corporate crisis communications or even logistics management, SMS is being adopted as a low-cost, easy to use communications tool. Further even to this is the whole integration of SMS into the rapidly emerging mobile web – whether its SMS v2.0 style chat services, mobile search services based on SMS or even mobile advertising, SMS is finding a place alongside some of the more cutting edge mobile technologies.

All of these ideas are simply building on SMS and adding in new and powerful functionality that will enhance the way people currently use the technology. On top of this, another development we heard at the show was the fact that operators are also onside in the return to SMS. As well as adopting some of the new SMS tools, it seems we’re going to see a slew of new advertising and marketing campaigns driving SMS usage amongst new audiences – whether younger or older than the traditional SMS users.

What all of this is telling us is that SMS is far from dead. Whilst many have predicted the coming of a new post-SMS world, it doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon. Indeed, if this year’s Congress is anything to go by, the future of SMS is growth, and not retreat.