Mobile IM Eats SMS?
by Imran Ali
Following this week’s publication of a Gartner research report, there’s been some commentary onthe relative growth of SMS messaging and mobile instant messaging clients and services.
The report - profile here by Betanews - speaks of a 19.6% increasein the global volume of SMS traffic (that’s 2.3 trillion messages?)…interestingly, the report highlights South East Asia as the most prolific messagers, averaging around fifteen messages each day. Gartner go on to suggest that the growth of mobile social networks will gradually cannibalise SMS usages as users begin to communicate without the need for SMS as a carrier.
CrunchGrear’s counterpoint to Gartner’s analysis - and one I’m inclined to agree with - is that while social networks and IM networks effectively lack interoperability, SMS’ ‘baked-in’ cross-device and cross-network compatibility will likely slow the cannibalisation of SMS by mobile IM. With the major IM networks polarised around Google+AIM on the one hand and Yahoo+MSNon the other, handset manufacturers and cellcos tend to pick a camp which favours commercial terms, not user needs.
To add to this, unfettered use of mobile IM or mobile social networks is generally enabled through the adoption of generous or all-you-can-eat data plans - which are likely to exceed the budgets of most casual pay-as-you-go users.
As services such as Twitter have shown, there’s still a a lot of mileage and innovation in SMS…with what has essentially become the command line interface of the mobile internet.
