| Business SMS – the sending and receiving of SMS | | | | period last year – despite their outages. |
| via a PC as part of day to day business | | | | But one needs to be careful to strip the “US |
| communications – is a rapidly growing channel. | | | | effect” within these statistics and the underlying |
| Typically users take advantage of Web SMS or Email | | | | assumptions. With a “Receiver pays” model, |
| to SMS tools, or integrate their own systems with a | | | | texting just didn’t take off in the States and |
| Business SMS service using an SMS API. | | | | alternative channels have been relatively more |
| The Mobile Data Association recently published an | | | | successful here than elsewhere in the world. This and |
| excellent report highlighting its use by SMEs in | | | | the desire to spot the next “big thing” has |
| particular. As an indicator of the growth of this | | | | contributed to a US-dominated investor sentiment |
| sector, Esendex’s own traffic is growing by | | | | which has trickled down to a general market view. |
| almost 100% pa and other SMS providers report | | | | Even so, this misses the point that SMS is already a |
| similar growth. | | | | global phenomenon: it is the most widely used data |
| However, there is also a view that SMS will be | | | | application in the world with 2.4 billion active users. |
| overtaken by communication channels such as Mobile | | | | That doesn’t mean that SMS, and Business SMS |
| Email, Instant Messaging or social media tools such as | | | | in particular, will necessarily replace other |
| Twitter. There are certainly some staggering | | | | communication channels – it should be viewed as |
| statistics around Twitter – Hitwise reported this | | | | part of the mix. |
| month that their traffic was 500% up on the same | | | | |