The text message is dead. What was once the cutting edge of cool communication, the language shaper of millions of teens, and the source of vowel-less frustration for parents worldwide, the SMS has showed its first decline in the UK, as instant messaging services for smartphones continue on their unstoppable rise.
Text messaging revolutionised the telecoms industry, generating billions for network providers. The number of texts fell by 7bn in 2013, down to 145bn. That’s still a shed load, but the decline does go to mark the beginning of the end of the good old SMS.
Cited by The Guardian, The head of telecoms research at Deloitte, Paul Lee, said: "This is the first decline in texting in the UK since texting was invented. We have reached a tipping point. But the usage of mobile phones to send messages is stronger than ever. This year, trillions of instant messages will be sent in place of a text message."
Poor BlackBerry pioneered the internet-based mobile messaging method back in 2006 with its BBM service, and that was soon joined by Apple’s iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and then WhatsApp in 2009.
But now one of the big questions facing network providers is how exactly they’re going to deal with revenue loss and monetise what are effectively free communication services. A recent Ovum analysis predicted that telcos will lose $54bn in SMS revenues by 2016!
What do you think the answer is for telcos?
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