Text messaging activity has grown exponentially since the first text message was sent 1992. In the first quarter of 2007, 620 billion text messages were sent generating US$ 11.3 billion in revenue.
The reasons for this “text revolution” include:
Text is an immediate person to person communication, which more often than not gets an instant reply.
SMS saves time because it goes directly to the intended recipient.
SMS is a discreet method of communication.
SMS is a prevailing, cost effective method of communication. Text steps ahead of all other forms of communication. If a person receives a SMS, they invariably read the message immediately and generally reply straight away. For example if a person is in a meeting and receives a text message, he will read the message immediately and reply to it. If a person is reading an email and receives a text message, he will stop reading the email and reply to the SMS.
Of a worldwide population of 6.5 billion, 2.3 billion have mobile phones with the capability to send and receive SMS.
Text is not limited to 160 characters because a number of messages can be linked together.
Text has a higher usage prevalence than push email. The importance of push email to mobile business has resulted in millions of dollars in investment. The large majority of this communication could have been achieved using text. Most people have a mobile phone but very few have PDAs and use push email.
The infrastructure to support text is readily available and is easily adopted by most people. This is a unique aspect of the technology because the infrastructure or ability to communicate with any other medium is limited.
Various university studies, including studies by the University of Queensland in Australia and the Catholic University of Leeuwen, have proven SMS messaging to be addictive.
Text keeps to the point because of the brevity of messages.
Time is the one resource that cannot be cloned and you cannot buy more of. You cannot store or archive it… when it passes it is gone. Good, timeously, sound information is key in business. SMS is the channel to send this information.
