SMS, the 15-year old technology is forecasted to reach revenues of $165bn (globally) by 2011, delivering 6,000% RoI.
If you look at SMS as an app, the most important factor behind the growth is that it’s bundled with every mobile phone – and while VAS companies are building a walled garden of content, sms is the trigger point behind any such transaction.
So many business models have been built around this application – right from delivering ads, routing service to sms based voip.
Having said that, has the technology evolved?
SMS 2.0, the colorful SMS dream painted by affle/Airtel doesn’t seem to spread and voice sms is not “heard” either (atleast in India).
What’s your take?
It would be interesting to know the worth of IM services, IMHO the only real competitor for SMS will be IM.
Interestingly, the cost of sending an SMS is very low, so the charge is unjustified. I am sure network operators around the world enjoy very high operating margins on SMS, and nobody wants to drop rates (at least in India!) since voice rates are in free falls, and SMS provides for a great VAS revenue source.
It will be interesting to see if the coming of new players will make any of them drop rates, and then how the VAS industry shapes up. Since, IMHO the cost of actual routing of an SMS is not very high, I am sure one of the players is going to use it as a means of gaining entry. Then, we might see a bigger explosion in SMS traffic (the way email changed after free email from Hotmail, and then free storage from Gmail).
It depends on the spectrum too – rgt now its a case of demand/supply..supply is limited,and demand is high- so bargaining power is with the operators…
hopefully virgin will change lot of stuff
Sir, how do i unsubscribe from smsgupshup group, i now prefer online feeds for mobile also like newsgator from sms updates.
Nice Post !
You should use an Indian social bookmarking widget like PrachaarThis to let your users easily bookmark your blog posts on Indian social bookmarking websites.
And I though the post is about some new japaense kid who found the successor of Pokemon!
But, I think its only in the recent years that SS has really been growing, atleast the commercial uses of it. With interactive updates and using them for voting for TV shows. But much greater than that is something like twitter, or mobile advertising.