About 638 days ago Telecom and Wireless | Wireless Networks

Text Messaging May Soon Be a Thing of the Past

Thanks to free apps, exclusive messaging services, and changing wireless plans, your thumbs are destined for new platforms.
Posted on August 24, 2011 by Abe Brown
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Courtesy of The New York Times.
Courtesy of The New York Times.

Text messaging might soon wind up as a dead technology, destined for that smoky gray place of yesterday where VCR tapes, record players, and rotary phones lie in great mounds.Growth in the text-messaging industry has slowed for the past several years, but for the first time ever, the number of texts sent per U.S. subscriber dropped in the first quarter, said John Hodulik, a UBS research analyst.

A number of factors play into this decline. Plenty of smartphone apps provide free text-messaging service: GroupMe, Disco, Beluga, to name a few. You can send a text message right from Google’s instant messenger. Some smartphone companies offer their own messaging services, like Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Messenger and Apple’s soon-to-debut iMessage.

And make no mistake, wireless companies are directly involved in the decline. Last week, AT&T scraped its cheaper texting plans, meaning its customers must now pay per message or chose its $20 unlimited plan. Other wireless companies are consider what will come next for them.

Before your anger mounts, and you reach for your phone to send out a few words about the outrages you’ve just read about, consider this:  A text message can contain a maximum of 160 bytes. Say you pay 20 cents per text message, you’ll wind up paying $1,250 per megabyte.

So keep the phone in your pocket. Perhaps it’s time to send text-messaging the way of the telegraph –  time for a mobile SOS.

Read more from CNN Money.

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  • http://jeffjudge.com Jeff Judge

    Great article from CNN Money and summary here. I think what needs to be recognized is that SMS is a universal platform with cost being the only barrier to entry. As much as the messaging applications pick up steam, you still can’t beat the easy of use in create a text message on your phone and sending it to any phone number in the world. No software to install, nothing to learn. The carriers are savvy, they’re just going to push more of the costs over to data plans and give text messaging away for free…carriers like MetroPCS and U.S. Cellular are already doing this and growing their subscriber base quickly.

  • Dave

    Need to also remember that many of us see absolutely no need for smartphones.  We don’t need to be constantly in touch, we don’t need the various apps, and so on.  Texting will continue for quite some time to come.

  • http://www.squidoo.com/best-laptop-under-500 Charles Dendy

    Text messaging is somehow a very useful feature, if you are the type of a person who just wants to send the message and no small-talks, but there are a lot of good factors pointed out on this article, very well said.

  • Anonymous

    I do agree, also some limitations to SMS Mobile Marketing is, senders could only utilize a utmost of one hundred sixty characters, which means sending a detailed promotion message out can be very difficult.