The last few months, I have been thinking a lot about SMS.  We’ve had customers deploy and develop voice and video SMS solutions, which are innovative in their own right, and we’ve seen what Twitter can do.  But at a very high level, what is the future of SMS?  

I mean, as IP mobile networks proliferate, you can “instant message” people much more easily by using over the top data services.  And with the rise of Smartphones (see last week’s blog) the use of over the top data services arrives. I’m also a Blackberry user and while I don’t really use the Blackberry messenger feature, I could.   These, and other technologies, would impact SMS.  The need to “nearly instant” message is still there, you’d simply “nearly instant” message just using different technologies.

So I found this blog from Matt Ablott very interesting – he cites data from a Dutch regulator about SMS declines.  Matt raises some good points about how fast the decline may be, and how the operators may or may not respond.  Good thoughts for all of us to wrap our head around.