SMS: The little engine that could

I’ve always found it odd that carriers charge for voice, charge for data and then charge separately for text messages. Isn’t text data? It’s words after all, from a user’s point of view.
But no, SMS somehow is a bridge between voice and data (indeed, text messages typically travel over the network’s control channel, rather than the voice or data channel). Traditionally, SMS has been used for peer-to-peer communications, an alternative to sometimes costly, intrusive voice calls. But the role of SMS in the wireless industry may well evolve, thanks to the market’s seeming constant state of innovation.
So what’s next for this little cash cow of the wireless industry?
If you guessed more growth, you’d be in line with predictions from TeleCommunication Systems, which says it handled from 25% to 30% of the 300-billion-plus text messages sent in the U.S. last year.
TCS’ chief marketer Tim Lorello said he expects messaging to double again this year, if the U.S. follows growth patterns observed overseas. And when you throw mobile advertising and mobile search into the mix — both new services that rely extensively on text messaging — the market for SMS could exceed even optimistic forecasts.
Both mobile search and mobile advertising make sense too because they are mass-market applications for an increasingly tech-savvy marketplace where teens routinely manage several thousand texts each month. But beyond that, Lorello sees a spot for SMS messages in machine-to-machine communications. Sending a text to turn on the oven so it’s preheated when you arrive? Crazy, but possible. Sending a text to order a movie to be delivered to your car’s entertainment system during a long road trip? Certainly within the realm of possibility if it’s implemented in such a way that it can be easier/cheaper/more convenient than popping a DVD into the system.
Although such applications seem somewhat far-fetched today, that doesn’t mean they won’t succeed. Many in the industry viewed text messaging with a certain level of scorn just a few years ago, before it proved the powerhouse of carriers’ data revenues.
Indeed, text messaging may remain the little engine that could.