Writing’s on the wall for text messages
How many regular texts have you sent lately? Chances are, a lot less than you think, writes Lee Suckling.
Compare that to just 21 billion traditional text messages (short message service, or SMS) that are sent daily, and it’s easy to see the gap in revenue mobile phone carriers are now trying to manage.
Dubbed ‘‘MIMs’’ (Mobile Instant Messaging) by the technology industry, it was in 2012 when these message types took market share over traditional SMS messages: 19 billion MIMs were sent across the globe, slightly overtaking the 17.6 billion SMS messages sent.
A little more than five years ago, instant messaging services that used data instead of a mobile network did not exist. The standard cost of a text message was 20c, meaning our SMSfriendly world was filling carriers’ pockets.
Blackberry’s messenger service BBM has been around since the business-focused phone went on the market, but low market penetration for the brand in New Zealand meant Kiwis never knew about it.
As 2014 rolls through one-finger typing is unpopular in favour of two-handed texting on smartphone QWERTY keyboards. According to the Financial Times, MIMs have ‘‘done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines’’; that is, obliterated it completely for the techno-savvy among us that seek free ways to get the same telecommunication services.
One of the first MIMs services to launch was Whatsapp Messenger, which has largely remained unchanged since its 2009 launch. It
Texting is beginning to fall out of favour and likely to be replaced by mobile instant messaging in the next five years. was the development of push notifications by Apple on its phone that heralded the development of Whatsapp – for the first time, non-SMS notifications could pop up on the iPhone 3G/S screen.
Today, there are 500 million Whatsapp users worldwide, using every mobile operating system, so it will likely give you access to more of your friends and family than any other MIM service.
Aside from Whatsapp, other services include Viber, an internet voice app that allows free calling and texting and boasts over 140 million users, MessageMe and Snapchat – both which focus on multimedia messaging and drawing, Voxer, which operates like a walkie-talkie for voice and text, and HeyTell, which offers a hold-and-speak button that instantly sends a voicemail-like message.
Dedicated MIM apps aren’t your only option, however. If you have an iPhone, you may be sending free MIM messages instead of standard texts without even knowing it.
iMessage is the Apple-to-Apple device service . You can tell if you’re sending and receiving iMessages by your message colour: they’re blue instead of green. You can’t send your location over iMessage like you can using Whatsapp, but this service offers some additional benefits over the standard text/ photo/video offering, including the ability to send documents and contact information.
Also, you can send messages to groups of people, not just individuals – which makes organising get-togethers a breeze because everyone receives the same information.
Will these services be the death of the traditional text message? Perhaps not yet. SMS is the one uniform service that works across every mobile phone in the world, and developing countries in particular are still reliant on it. Informa says ‘‘there’s still a lot of life in SMS’ but, perhaps in another five years, the traditional text might be relegated to emergency-only situations.