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Short Messaging Service, a way for
mobile phone users to send each other short text messages from the keypads
of their
gsm phones. Especially popular with teenagers, sms is also
used by many doctors, salespeople and other professionals as a cheap and
easy way of sending and receiving time-critical information. One study in
late 2002 by Gartner, a research company, showed that more Europeans now use
sms than e-mail. Some companies offer sms-to-e-mail
gateways, allowing subscribers to send and receive internet e-mail while
they are on the road.
Sms has surprised everyone in the mobile
phone world, proving much more popular than clumsier and more complex
technologies such as wap. In the UK, over 2m sms messages were
sent every hour in September 2002 alone and monthly numbers are now well
over 1 billion. The gsm Association estimates that in 2002,people
around the world sent 360 billion sms messages, dwarfing the number
of other non-voice uses for mobile phones. In this context, sms must
be seen not just as an interesting toy for phone owners but also as a rich
source of revenue for telecoms companies, which charge for every messages
sent. Many companies are now finding ways to extend the usefulness of sms
beyond mere personal messaging. One promising development is shopping, which
can be done simply by sending an appropriately formatted message to a
retailer without the need for a web browser or even a computer. Many
companies now view sms as a more reliable marketing tool than direct
mail or telesales. |
