Text messaging has become such a normal part of everyday life that it seems hard to believe that it was unheard of 25 years ago. Today global figures for text messages sent per day have reached approximately 21 billion.
A brief history of testing
It all began in the mid 1980s when an employee of Deutsche Telecom, Fried helm Hillebrand developed the concept of the short message. He calculated that 160 characters were enough to communicate the average sentence, and this came to determine the maximum length of a short message. In 1992 the first message was sent from a PC to a mobile via the Vodafone network, and two years later in Finland the first commercial short SMS Services was launched.
When SMS was first launched no one anticipated that it would become one of the communication methods of choice for so many people. The popularity of the SMS took everyone by surprise, not least the service providers themselves. Initially texting became popular with teenagers and younger people – perhaps ideal because it was a way of communicating discretely during a dull lesson at college.
Texting was fiddlier on older style mobile phones, because you had to scroll through the keys to get the required letter. But as more sophisticated products were launched such as Blackberries and Smartphone’s with complete keypads, texting became quicker and appealed to a broader audience.
The text message became so popular that the capability was extended to landline phones, so that people could send a text message from a landline to a mobile phone and vice versa. Other features were developed, so that photos or video could be attached as part of a text message.
Now apps are available to make texting accessible at all times. You can now use a voice-to-text app to dictate a text message instead of typing it – convenient for when you are driving, or use a voice command to instruct your phone to read text messages out loud.
What does the future hold?
Some experts believe that texting via the standard SMS has peaked as 2013 saw for the first time a drop in the number of text messages sent in the UK, with a total of 145 billion text messages in 2013 compared with the 2012 figure of 152 billion. Other types of instant messaging service have overtaken the SMS in popularity, including iMessage, WhatsApp and Snap chat. Consultancy firm Deloitte predicts that total figures for 2014 will show SMS usage in the UK dropping slightly further to 140 billion, with instant messages reaching 300 billion. However, the text message is unlikely to see a rapid decline, as it is the one message format which all mobile phone users have in common, with other services being dependent on users having downloaded the particular app. The younger generation might be more fickle and ready to try out new apps frequently, but while they were the first to adopt Text Messaging Service, it is older users who have now adopted the service and will keep it alive for the foreseeable future.
A brief history of testing
It all began in the mid 1980s when an employee of Deutsche Telecom, Fried helm Hillebrand developed the concept of the short message. He calculated that 160 characters were enough to communicate the average sentence, and this came to determine the maximum length of a short message. In 1992 the first message was sent from a PC to a mobile via the Vodafone network, and two years later in Finland the first commercial short SMS Services was launched.
When SMS was first launched no one anticipated that it would become one of the communication methods of choice for so many people. The popularity of the SMS took everyone by surprise, not least the service providers themselves. Initially texting became popular with teenagers and younger people – perhaps ideal because it was a way of communicating discretely during a dull lesson at college.
Texting was fiddlier on older style mobile phones, because you had to scroll through the keys to get the required letter. But as more sophisticated products were launched such as Blackberries and Smartphone’s with complete keypads, texting became quicker and appealed to a broader audience.
The text message became so popular that the capability was extended to landline phones, so that people could send a text message from a landline to a mobile phone and vice versa. Other features were developed, so that photos or video could be attached as part of a text message.
Now apps are available to make texting accessible at all times. You can now use a voice-to-text app to dictate a text message instead of typing it – convenient for when you are driving, or use a voice command to instruct your phone to read text messages out loud.
What does the future hold?
Some experts believe that texting via the standard SMS has peaked as 2013 saw for the first time a drop in the number of text messages sent in the UK, with a total of 145 billion text messages in 2013 compared with the 2012 figure of 152 billion. Other types of instant messaging service have overtaken the SMS in popularity, including iMessage, WhatsApp and Snap chat. Consultancy firm Deloitte predicts that total figures for 2014 will show SMS usage in the UK dropping slightly further to 140 billion, with instant messages reaching 300 billion. However, the text message is unlikely to see a rapid decline, as it is the one message format which all mobile phone users have in common, with other services being dependent on users having downloaded the particular app. The younger generation might be more fickle and ready to try out new apps frequently, but while they were the first to adopt Text Messaging Service, it is older users who have now adopted the service and will keep it alive for the foreseeable future.