Companies should be careful of buying into the doomsday predictions around the demise of SMS. If they do, they will risk missing out on the excellent business opportunities that the SMS channel offers them.
There is no doubt that person-to-person (P2P) messaging has been impacted by the rise in popularity of mobile instant messaging (MIM), particularly iMessage, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), WhatsApp and Mxit. While these MIM applications offer a far cheaper way of communicating between individuals, these messaging technologies do not provide business-ready applications to communicate with staff, suppliers, customers, or consumers. This is where application-to-person (A2P) SMS messaging becomes an important investment for businesses today.
It is in the A2P messaging space where the real opportunities for companies lie, and where we are likely to continue to see growth in SMS business communications. The ubiquity of SMS as a mobile communication channel, its ability to verify mobile numbers on registration for a service, its use for one-time-passwords, and its value as an alert mechanism will ensure its longevity in the market.
