There has been a lot of good postings on the future of Messaging in the last couple of weeks. I want to thank my fellow bloggers on their insightful views and for sharing their opinions. As well as those readers that posted their comments onto this blog.

I believe it is in our nature to always look beyond what we have today; next year’s model is always better than last year’s; to never stand still, to look to the next big thing, to explore space and dimensions outside of our current understanding and our current reach. We feel the need to excel beyond our parents’ achievements, and a competitive need to excel with each other. Similarly we look to our services, which we use daily, and expect our services to evolve from their current capability and provide us with bells and whistles that would improve their usage and thereby improving our lifestyle.

Analysts, for years, have attempted to forecast the day of peak messaging revenue. To date that day has not come and but we see evidence of double and triple digit growth. The latest number from the Mobile Data Association in UK have reported another defining moment of 1 Billion text messages in week. Across the pond in my backyard the CTIA, have reported a growth rate of 127% from last year to this year in text messaging. North America is currently delivering 1 Billion text messages a day! So what is the defining day of max revenue? When should operators begin to worry? And as my kids ask me on those long car trips: Are we there yet?

Operators have provided MIM as a service offering for more than three years now. And in my previous post I stated my position on MIM. Ovum is imploring operators to look at a new type of service offering that can inject new messaging revenues into SMS. The article may lead you to believe that MIM will make up the shortage of falling messaging revenue. Again, as early evidence indicates MIM is providing an enhanced user experience, and not at the expense of SMS. Is MIM too far too fast for most subscribers to grasp? Answering my own question, the answer in my honest belief is it’s not too far. However handset capability and ubiquity on all handsets does limit MIM as a pervasive messaging utility.

One would not have to extend their network infrastructure too far to augment the SMS revenue stream, but to look at Mobile Messaging 2.0 architecture to provide the relief. By taking the Open Standards and Open Interface approach, adding and inserting additional capabilities and features into the network allows for an easy augmentation of the service and therefore more importantly providing for a needed bump in revenue. The Mobile Messaging 2.0 architecture as it is defined allows for simple features to be added such as Personal Services whereby subscribers are provided a feature set similar to email; such as messaging forwarding and archiving. The MM2.0 architecture allows for operators to entertain alternative business models such as enabling mobile advertising into the person-to-person text and picture message flows (similarly to how MSN, Yahoo, and Google advertise with free email and more importantly generate revenue). The Mobile Marketing Association is one of many driving thrusts helping to drive a definition for advertising in the mobile services arena.

Evolving may mean going back to a previously visited version of what you may have had. At times a good idea from the past, in the form of a design, surprising had an appeal that did not capture the audience of today. The fashion and automotive industry are a couple of industries that are recycling thru old ideas and designs of the past. In fashion we have seen the 1970 bell bottoms recycled / refreshed into this generations “flares. In the automotive industry Ford and BMW have restyled their much sought after Mustang and Mini of the 60’s and has reinvigorated interest in youth rodding and nostalgic cruising. My favourite model being the 69 Mustang Mach1 of which I am a proud owner. The market calls this “retro”. Maybe SMS, with the addition of Personal and with Ad-Inserted capabilities is the bell-bottom from 15 years ago, but with a twist, and we have just defined “retro-SMS”! I like to think of this augmentation as Retro Revenue!

Please tell me how you would like to retro your SMS!