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Reported by Portio Research that current SMS  revenues in excess of USD150 billion despite of the economy downturn and set to continue growing to more than USD233 billion by year 2014.

The performance of SMS over the last five years has been staggering and remains so mainly because it is cheap, easy to use, convenient, discreet and universally acceptable to some 4 billion consumers worldwide. During 2009 SMS continued to grow in all markets and the report confidently predicts that it will continue to do so for several more years. In 2009 worldwide SMS traffic topped 5 trillion messages, and that figure is set to exceed 10 trillion in 2013.

Today MMS, often cited as a failure, is a massive revenue-generating segment of the market. Full year revenues for 2009 amount to almost USD 27 billion, an impressive figure, and lest people forget, not far off what SMS was generating a mere 5 years ago. MMS is growing fast in all major regions around the world as affordable camera-equipped handsets flood the market and increasingly become the norm.

So talking about the MMS, do you think is it really a failure? Do you send MMS as often as SMS?

A woman in Australia is suing her government for receiving a SMS warning of bush fire.  This is because the emergency text message of bush fire is not complete with sufficient of information like the exact location of the fire took place.

“The text message doesn’t really tell you anything, because the area they are talking about is really huge,” she said. “I spent all night trying to find out information about it and it was next to impossible. The 1800 phone numbers they give you are just recorded messages of the same information on the website and I just found it totally frustrating.

“I understand in an emergency everyone is stretched to the limit but this new system was supposed to keep you in the loop.”

RFS assistant commissioner Rob Rogers said as the fire situation was changing quickly, it was difficult to give precise locations.

He also said the text messages were limited to 160 characters, so using specific addresses or even GPS co-ordinates would mean less information in the messages. “Specific addresses could change minute by minute, making GPS or map co-ordinates inaccurate. Also, GPS co-ordinates may not be clear to many people.”

In September the federal government awarded $15 million to Telstra to build a national emergency warning system to send text and voice messages to the mobile phones and landlines of residents threatened by bushfires.

The system was officially used for the first time on Thursday in Michelago, Tooma and Gerogery.

source

Gartner reported that even during a financial crisis recently, the usage of SMS has not been decreased but oppositely increased by 15.5% to reach about 1.9 trillion SMS this year compare to year 2008.

In 2010, SMS volumes are forecast to surpass 2.1 Trillion, a 12.7 percent increase from 2009.

Gartner analysts said that messaging traffic and revenues continue to be driven by new subscribers in developing markets.

“Strong organic growth continues in Asia’s developing markets, with marginal subscribers turning to low-cost messaging as an entry-level service,” said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. “In the mature markets of the Asia/Pacific region, SMS has seen sustained healthy growth as a result of steady price declines and increasingly generous SMS and data bundles.”

Ford motor is researching the feasibility on “voice to text” – hands free text device,  after endorsing a proposal to U.S government on a ban in texting while driving.

“A voice-recognition approach is better than bringing in a piece of paper and unfolding a map or looking down at a mobile device,” Jim Buczkowski, Ford’s director of electronics said Monday. “We’re looking at various combinations of accomplishing that task because it’s being asked for by consumers.”

Earlier this month, Ford became the first automaker to support the texting bill, introduced by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. The legislation would withhold 25 percent of U.S. highway aid to states that do not ban reading or writing text messages on hand-held devices while driving.

In my opinion, texting is always far more dangerous than talking over the mobile phone. My country, whenever you hold your mobile phone while driving, be it talking or texting, you gonna get a 90USD fine right away. Or probably you could end up like this :-

You should think twice before sending a erotic, insulting or threatening SMS messages if you stay in Henan Province, China. This is because the local province legal office has announced that a new law to prevent unwanted and inappropriate text messages via mobile phones.

In Henan province, one such message will lead to five days in detention, and three messages could result in 10 days detention and a fine of 500 yuan ($73).The rules state that sending an erotic, insulting or threatening messages, which interrupt receivers’ normal lives will result in a maximum five-day detention or a 500-yuan fine.

In the case of three or more messages, the sender will be detained for a maximum of 10 days and must pay a maximum 500-yuan fine.

Henan is not the first province to address injurious text messages. Liaoning province passed a regulation early this year saying that erotic text messages can be part of a sexual harassment charge.

With the country’s mobile users hitting more than 600 million, the amount of rubbish text messaging has been increasing.

extracted from ChinaDaily.com.cn

Reported by MediaPost Publication, tactics from the book publisher in promoting the latest novel “Cell” from Stephen King may be against the law.

An appellate court ruled Friday that book publisher Simon & Schuster might have violated federal law by allegedly sending unsolicited text messages promoting Stephen King’s “Cell.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that sending SMS messages potentially violates the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using automatic telephone dialing systems to make calls to cell phones unless the owners have consented. The decision appears to mark the first time that a federal appellate court has said that the telephone law applies to text messages.

Read the Full Article HERE

Now you can forget about the tiny keyboard or the touch qwerty keypad whenever you want to send an email or SMS via your mobile phone. At the Duke University,  engineering students has come out a prototype of  mobile application call Air Text/Wave Messaging. This mobile app allow you to compose/key in text just merely waving your mobile phone.

“By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air,” said Sandip Agrawal, an electrical and computer engineering student at Duke University in North Carolina.

The air-writing app takes advantage of accelerometers already inside cell phones such as Apple’s iPhone. Accelerometers normally keep track of phone movements and orientation, such as having the display screen rotate from portrait to landscape mode.

Speed writers may still want to stick with texting for now, because air-writers currently have to pause briefly between each letter and cannot use cursive. But researchers expect an improved app that will come with better algorithms and accelerometers.

Future versions of this PhonePoint Pen app may even allow users to take a photo with their phone and write a quick note on it.  extracted from LiveScience.com

So in the near future, when you see people waving their mobile phone please don’t think that they are saying hi to you.