Our cell phones are used regularly to send SMS messages to and receive text messages from friends, family and colleagues. On average each cell phone in the world sends 36 messages per month, this reinforces the importance of SMS or text messaging in our lives today.
But where did SMS originate from and how did it grow to become such a large part of our lives?
The development of the Short Message Service cannot be attributed to a single person or company. It was the co-operation of many different people around the world that led to this achievement.
France and Germany first made the proposal of SMS at the GSM meeting in 1985. The development of the modern SMS service on the GSM network was prompted by this meeting. The first SMS or text message was sent by the Vodafone GSM network on the 3 December 1992 in the United Kingdom using a computer. The first SMS or text message sent by a mobile phone, is claimed by an engineer working for Nokia in 1993.
Initial growth of the short message service was slow with an average of 0.5 messages sent per GSM handset per month in 1995. Within 5 years this number grew 70 fold with 35 text messages per handset being sent a month.
Text messaging is very widely used within the USA, sending over 70 Billion messages via SMS in 2008. The reasons for this SMS service becoming so popular are numerous.
The individual user can save money by sending a quick text message instead of calling the person. The youth of today have adopted sending SMS as the popular new way of communicating with their friends. Commercial sending of bulk SMS messages using a PC that connects to a bulk SMS gateway has become a very popular and effective marketing tool.
The increase in use of the short message service is rather simple. It provides people with an easy to use two way communication channel that costs very little versus making a phone call. Ones cell phone is always on a person so a message can be sent at any time, removing the need to be in front of a PC to send or receive an email. Telecommunication costs can be reduced by almost 80% when using SMS or text messaging.
Big corporations dramatically increase their customer service ratings by using SMS for notifications. SMS messaging, or texting, has become part of our daily lives and is sure to be with us for a long time.
The short message service industry is now worth over 81 billion US dollars a year and is showing no signs of slowing down. With nearly a 90% profit margin it is no wonder that the SMS industry is booming.
