[gorilla]

As an iphone user, I've been irked by the inbuilt sms client, to the extent that I've had to jail break and purchase additional software. Apple, in their wisdom created a device that was geared towards emailing and therefore even omitted an MMS function.
Now, I'm not going to get all hot and bothered about the iphone, MMS or whatever, but interestingly (according to the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/technology/29drill.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)) Americans are now sending more text messages (SMS) than phone calls.


In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile. Since then, the average subscriber’s volume of text messages has shot upward by 64 percent, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly.

Teenagers ages 13 to 17 are by far the most prolific texters, sending or receiving 1,742 messages a month, according to Nielsen Mobile. By contrast, 18-to-24-year-olds average 790 messages.


Given that the yanks are now texting like crazy and fast catching up on us Europeans, what is the future of SMS?

I only ask on the back of the Android launch, which I also believe omitted MMS (apologies if I'm wrong) and is promoting gmail.

Will handset manufacturers continue to ignore customer user habits?

Instant messaging, which has been around for ages on the desktop, has really struggled to make an impact on mobiles.

I suppose it all boils down to numbers. The networks make a lot of money from sms, and at a guess I would say the average cost is around 10p per message sent. Even with bundles, the cost (to the consumer) is still significant compared to the actual cost incurred by the operator.

In any event, the networks will not want sms to decline, but if more and more of us have smartphones, querty keyboards and data plans, what is to stop us all using email instead?

[Hands0n]

Hmmm, an interesting topic. SMS is a free ride for the mobile network operators as they are using spare capacity using the Signaling Channel, that used to send the dialled digits and on-hook/off-hook conditions of the handset. At all other times the signaling channel is not used and so a decision was made back at the beginning of Cellular Networks time to use the "spare" capacity for SMS. At that time the thought that SMS would be used as extensively as it is today was unthinkable, particularly as each SMS cost the consumer 60p (think how much that is in today's money! we're talking 1983'ish). So yes, the mobile network operators have had a very long free ride charging us upwards of 12p per message that actually costs them nothing, zero, to manage.

For those of a technical bent who want to know more about how it works a dated but rather well presented article can be read here --> http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/channels/sms/features/sms.html
Or another shorter article is here -->http://www.logixmobile.com/faq/show.asp?catid=1&faqid=3


The cost of the SMC (Short Message Centre) is a "sunk cost" in the network build, that is it is a once off that costs nothing more to actually run. In the same way MMS is provisioned using a core of equipment that, once paid for, costs nothing [in relative terms] to run, such is the nature of this store and forward networking.

I do not think that the world is quite ready for mobile email to trounce this well-established means of communicating. Although SMS and MMS, like Telex, will ultimately be displaced particularly as eMail is a fundamental part of Internetworking. And that is the why behind the question as to why SMS/MMS are still around. To date the mobile network operators have steadfastly refused us access to mobile broadband/data at affordable rates. In doing so they have arrested the market for mobile email for all but the elite or businesses.

Now that we are seeing data plans for the masses we will begin to see mobile email take off. Devices like the iPhone now and the Google Android soon will, coupled with data plans, begin the rot for SMS and MMS. But not for yet awhile, I'd speculate. The sheer inertia behind SMS/MMS is formidable and we are probably looking at quite a few years before we see eMail become dominant over these technological dinosaurs.

Why would the mobile operators allow this to happen? I think the answer is money. It costs even less to transport Internet traffic once the initial build is done. We are going to see the operators use more IP-based transmission, ultimately direct to the handset for everything including voice and video. It makes sense, then, for them to have a roadmap to that end, and why we are seeing them suddenly become somewhat benevolent to mobile data for all.

What is to stop us using email instead of SMS/MMS? Nothing at all, and I do not believe that the mobile network operators would want us to stop using email. In fact I would go as far as to suggest that they actually need us to shift across to email, but they won't be letting on for quite a while yet.

[gorilla]

It is my firm belief that one day, the mobile operators will have to become ISPs of a sort. Data will become too important a revenue stream and consumers habits will change to reflect this.

The days when people access the internet purely from a desktop / laptop are long gone, so I believe mobile email will boom in popularity and eventually replace SMS / MMS. Several factors will have to be resolved first however.
Firstly, cost. Data plans will have to become bundled like the iPhone tariff.
Second, battery life will need to be improved.
Third, mobile email clients will need to be able to replicate the desktop experience i.e. send multiple attachments.
Fourth, email will have to be as instant as sms, so we will all need push email.
Lastly, and probably the biggest factor, consumers need to adopt mobile email. Once this happens then sms really will die as a medium for communication.

[Ben]

SMS will always have its uses.

Yes, the size of an SMS is a bit too tiny, the cost is relatively high in terms of network standard rates and the feature set is narrow, but that 160 characters/140 bytes has become very useful.

Firstly, SMS has a cost. Unlike email, each SMS message has to be paid for at the point of sending. The result? Greatly reduced amounts of spam. Spam on mobile email is, unfortunately, going to be a big problem - and it's already so established that it will be hard to get the mobile email revolution started without customers being exposed to spam just were they don't want it; on their mobile.

SMS, being short and subject-less, also has that immediacy and succinctness that mediums such as mobile email can lack. Don't get me wrong, I love my mobile email on my iPhone, but it's certainly not as quick as an SMS, which typically delivers in just a few seconds. I suppose the ideal way of implementing push email, and this may be the case already in implementations such as Blackberry, is to use SMS to trigger the handset to pull down new messages. So even if we do move to mobile email, there's a good chance SMS will still be involved indirectly.

Another big benefit of SMS is that it works on anything. It's so simple that it'll always be the backwards-compatible stand-by, even long after it has fallen from favour as people's primary form of mobile messaging.

Finally, companies who send alerts and marketing will likely continue to use SMS given its reliability and immediacy over email, and you can't really tell a 'mobile' email address from a regular one. Mobile operators will still use SMS to send out settings and software distributors will still use SMS to WAP-push their software.

The growth of SMS may well slow down over the next 5 years or so, but it'll take a long time for something that has become so entrenched in global communication to fade away. Death is a decade or more away.

[Hands0n]

Re Blackberry Push

As a point of order - the Blackberry Push mail does not use SMS to trigger. Rather it uses a rather complex back-end server architecture (BES) to manage mail between the corporate email systems and the handset itself


BlackBerry handhelds are integrated into an organization's e-mail system through a software package called "BlackBerry Enterprise Server" (BES). Versions of BES are available for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise. While individual users may be able to use a wireless provider's e-mail services without having to install BES themselves, organizations with multiple users usually run BES on their own network. Some third-party companies provide hosted BES solutions. Every BlackBerry has a unique id called BlackBerry PIN which is used to identify the device to the BES.

BES can act as a sort of e-mail relay for corporate accounts so that users always have access to their e-mail. The software monitors the user's local "inbox", and when a new message comes in, it picks up the message and passes it to RIM's Network Operations Center (NOC). The messages are then relayed to the user's wireless provider, which in turn delivers them to the user's BlackBerry device.

This is called "push e-mail," because all new e-mails, contacts and calendar entries are "pushed" out to the BlackBerry device automatically, as opposed to the user synchronizing the data by hand. Device storage also enables the mobile user to access all data offline in areas without wireless service. As soon as the user connects again, the BES sends the latest data.

Full article and links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry

and


BlackBerry
BlackBerry uses wireless Mail User Agent devices and a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) attached to a traditional e-mail system. The BES monitors the e-mail server, and when it sees new e-mail for a BlackBerry user, it retrieves (pulls) a copy and then pushes it to the BlackBerry handheld device over the wireless network.

BlackBerry became very popular, in part because it offers remote users "instant" e-mail; new e-mails appear on the device as soon as they arrive, without the need for any user intervention. The handheld becomes a mobile, dynamically updating, copy of the user's mailbox. As a result of the success of BlackBerry, other manufacturers have developed push e-mail systems for other handheld devices, such as Symbian based mobile phones.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_e-mail#BlackBerry

Now you might be wondering how BES knows the "state" of the Blackberry handset. Answer, it doesn't have to. BES relies upon the handset's home network to know all about state.


A BlackBerry receives email through the following process:

The Exchange account receives the message.
The redirector looks in the email account, finds the message, and forwards it to the BlackBerry service provided by RIM.
RIM's BlackBerry service sends the message to the wireless data network (e.g., AT&T, Verizon).
The wireless data network provider sends the message in a wireless signal to the BlackBerry device. (You must be in a data coverage area to receive mail.)
The BlackBerry receives the signal and displays the message.


And finally .... culled from the BES Feature and Technical Overview manual

1. A new message arrives in a user’s mailbox. Microsoft® Exchange notifies the BlackBerry® Messaging Agent.
2. The BlackBerry Messaging Agent applies global filter rules to the messages in the user’s mailbox and filters the messages
that match the filter criteria.
If no global filter rules apply, the BlackBerry Messaging Agent applies user-defined filter rules to the messages in the
user’s mailbox.
3. The BlackBerry Messaging Agent sends the first 2 KB of the message to the BlackBerry Dispatcher.
4. The BlackBerry Dispatcher compresses the first 2 KB of the message, encrypts it with the master encryption key of the
BlackBerry device, and then sends the encrypted data to the BlackBerry Router.
5. The BlackBerry Router sends the encrypted data over port 3101 to the wireless network.
6. The wireless network verifies that the PIN belongs to a valid BlackBerry device that is registered on the wireless network,
and then sends the message data to the BlackBerry device.
7. The BlackBerry device sends a delivery confirmation message to the BlackBerry Dispatcher. The BlackBerry
Dispatcher sends the delivery confirmation message to the BlackBerry Messaging Agent.
If the BlackBerry Messaging Agent does not receive a delivery confirmation message within four hours, it sends the
message to the wireless network again.
The delivery confirmation message confirms that the wireless network delivered the message to the BlackBerry device,
but it does not confirm that the user received or opened the message.
8. The BlackBerry device decrypts and decompresses the message so that the user can view it, and notifies the user that
the message has arrived.

[Ben]

Ok, I was only suggesting it would be an effective and probable use - not that it was used.

It sounds like a 140B SMS would actually be a whole lot more efficient!

[Hands0n]

:o Ooops, got a bit carried away

Worked on a site a while back with BES, and hated every single moment of it. Not seen anything quite so convoluted ..... Corp IT seems to love it tho!!!

Not my cup of tea at all :)

[chagle]

SMS is here to stay, its an easy way to communicate for when you don't want a long conversation.. emails cannot replace SMS, even on platforms meant for email (i.e. the web) people you SMS-like services e.g. twitter!

SMS has it's place I think, but so does email.

chaglee - like the name.. not too dissimilar to my own username! :eek:

[Ben]

chaglee - like the name.. not too dissimilar to my own username! :eek:
Fear ye not. They were here to do nothing more than post spam :)