Since iOS 5 and the introduction of iMessage, all the newspapers worldwide are writing about it. From the LA Times, to whom Sydney Morning Herald About The Economist up to the home FAZ If the wording is unanimous, the SMS will die out, and quickly. But is this really true?
The beginning of all of this was the Blackberry Messenger, which allows for the free sending of short messages over the Internet, thus combining the features of email and SMS. What was once a feature often used by Blackberry is now adopted by Apple with iMessage many years later. When you send a short message to a participant who also uses iMessage with your new iPhone, the message is not sent as an SMS, but instead delivered over the Internet for free. All other users, such as the large Android community, continue to receive the messages as paid SMS.
The service helps iPhone users save money, but it’s a shame that it’s only available to iPhone users and that it probably will remain that way. Things are quite different with Facebook Messenger, which is available across platforms and allows you to send short messages to your Facebook friends from your phone. The downside is that the app isn’t very good and not every entry in your address book is also a Facebook friend.
The best solution on the market right now is WhatsApp. You can also send free messages here, to all address book entries that also use WhatsApp. You don’t have to be friends with anyone, you don’t have to add anyone, and you don’t even need an iPhone. Accordingly, WhatsApp is booming right now and is likely to take the lead among messaging apps.
But does this really mean the end of SMS? The FAZ vividly illustrates that the volume of SMS sent is still increasing thanks to flat rates and new tariffs, but revenues are falling dangerously. A market worth 2.8 billion euros is at stake.
Personally, I also believe that private short messages will become increasingly rare as SMS. In fact, I probably send more messages via WhatsApp privately than via SMS, usually as part of a chat. People who don’t use WhatsApp still receive SMS from me, but the number is decreasing day by day.
What all messaging apps cannot do, however, is provide business customers with a way to reach their customers. Whether it’s mass SMS advertising or using an SMS gateway to send mTans, status updates for orders, appointment reminders, or a message that a package is in the delivery station. The use cases for business customers are vast and the doors of the messaging apps are closed to you for good reason. While companies like WhatsApp will have to make money somehow in the future, which suggests that a WhatsApp gateway will eventually be included in the offering. However, these gateways must not be too cheap; after all, the spam problem known from emails has to be somehow prevented, and besides, you can only reach a small portion of your customers with SMS, whereas with SMS you can actually reach everyone without having to worry about it. SMS are therefore much simpler to send and they arrive.
Every mobile phone can receive SMS messages, and even though I may send fewer SMS messages privately, I will still be happy to read SMS messages as a recipient. And the senders, such as business customers, will continue to be reassured that there is a medium that is supported by all recipients and at the same time very cost-effective. Probably the messaging apps will also help to boost our business, and prices will become cheaper and the services more comprehensive; in that sense, I and Lox24 have no fear of iMessage, Whatsapp or whatever comes along. And who knows, maybe we will soon have a Whatsapp Messenger in our portfolio.