This is the latest of a number of reports of the demise of text messaging that I have read over the past three years. Historically, these predictions have been hugely wide of the mark. Text volumes have risen tenfold in the past seven years, with 42 billion messages sent in the UK in 2006 - around 114 million each day. Text has become the most ubiquitous new form of messaging in the past decade, with 85 per cent of all mobile users within the UK sending or receiving texts.
So text is clearly here to stay for many of us for quite some time. However, for some, in particular the innovators and early adopters of new technology, it's clearly time to move on. So what is likely to happen and when?
Work inside the network operators over the past couple of years on the next generation of messaging points to the customer requirement for message threads and presence, in other words the type of experience that consumers are currently having on the web with IM.
In February 2006 at 3GSM, 14 network operators from around the globe signed an agreement on how they were going to work together to implement their integrated instant messaging. However, the announcement was short on detail. Eighteen months on and very little has appeared for the consumer, but things are changing. 3 introduced Windows Live IM a year ago and has already seen hundreds of thousands of users send hundreds of millions of messages. It is likely we will see other networks launching similar services over the next few months as they rush to catch up. What is clear is that once consumers are shown a useful new experience on their mobiles they will use it, particularly if it is interoperable with fixed-line web services that are simple to use and reasonably priced.
So, in short, while I still don't believe text has stopped growing (the MDA predicts a rise to 45 billion messages in 2007) I do believe we will see sharp increases in IM and mobile email over the next 12 months and far more of our traditional web brands appearing on our mobile devices.
Email: Hughg@microsoft.com.
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