MANILA, The Philippines—Short message service (SMS) technology, more popularly known as text messaging among Filipino mobile users, proved to be a substantial source of revenue for Smart Communications, the wireless provider of telecom giant Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Company (PLDT).
In 2001, an average of 39 million text messages per day were sent in 2001 compared with an average of 18 million messages a day in 2000. Text revenues more than doubled to 6.6 billion Philippine pesos (US$129.4 million) in 2001 from 2.2 billion pesos in 2000 (US$43.13 million), according to the company.
Smart added 2.3 million new GSM subscribers during the year and had 4.6 million GSM subscribers at year-end. Together with its analog subscriber base, Smart had total subscribers of 4.9 million as of December 2001, translating into a market share of 44.1 percent.
Napoleon Nazareno, Smart president, noted that the surge in subscriber numbers was complemented by Smart’s launch of innovative and interactive value-added services, such as Smart zed and Smart Money.
