Sore Thumbs–SMS vs. Mobile IM

By Kyron John at December 12, 2010 | 1:49 pm | Print

While it might seem like something you would read in a high school history textbook, there was a time when people only used their cellphones to make and receive calls, mainly because that’s all they were capable of. When you think about all of the things that the phone in your pocket right now are capable of, it blows the mind that as recently as 15 years ago, most of the mobile phones in the hands of consumers could only make calls. As technology advanced (as it’s known to do), we saw phones with larger screens – or just screens period – and mobile operators began to adopt the technology known as SMS (Short Message Service). The rest is, how you say, history and while it caught on slowly in some regions, it is without a doubt the most popular form of electronic communication ever. Allow me to put it into perspective, it has been estimated by the International Telecommunications Union that 6.1 trillion SMS messages will be sent in 2010. 6.1 TRILLION! That’s over 16.7 billion messages per day. 696 million messages per hour. 1.16 million messages per minute. And 193,429 texts in a second! In the time it took you to read the last 6 sentences, over 5 million text messages just got sent.

Now let’s compare that to instant messaging (IM), which predates mobile phones – Hell, it predates the Internet as its origins can be traced back to multi-user operating systems in the 1960s – but didn’t really start taking off until the mid to late 90s with such IM clients as ICQ and AIM (and if you say that you’ve never used either, you’re either 14 years old or a dirty, rotten liar). As you can probably tell by its decades long history, IM isn’t going anywhere and all that changes is the popular IM client of the moment. Since Internet access became widely available, I’ve used ICQ, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN/Windows Live Messenger and Skype IM as my primary IM client and protocol at one time or another and I’m sure there are several more people who used just as many clients as me, if not more because as your friends move on to something new, so do you. Since IM and cellphones started blowing up right around the same time, it only made sense that IM would start encroaching into the mobile space. However, as anyone would tell you, instant messaging hasn’t managed to gain nearly as much traction as SMS and here are 6 reasons why:

1.     Not everyone uses the same IM client

This is the same reason why ICQ doesn’t boast nearly as many active users as they once had and why some teenagers have never heard of it at all. IM users are fickle and eventually, they’ll move on to other clients for any number of reasons (all of their friends use it, more features, more secure, convenient, etc.) leading to a very diverse but very fragmented landscape where billions of IM users are spread out among dozens of clients that don’t talk to one another. This presents a problem when your client of choice isn’t supported on your phone. Meanwhile, any cellphone that you pick up today can send and receive SMS messages from any other phone.

2.     It’s very rare for IM clients to be built into phones

There aren’t many phones that have popular IM clients built into the software that it ships with. In fact, you might be hard pressed to find an official version of your IM client of choice for most phones as most companies leave their users in the hands of the developers of eBuddy and Nimbuzz when it comes to Mobile IM. On top of that, as popular as Apple and Google would lead you to believe loading apps onto your phone is, 70% of mobile phone users have never even downloaded software onto their device so if it isn’t there when they power on their phone, it never will be. Meanwhile, when was the last time you picked up a cellphone WITHOUT the ability to compose or receive a text message?

3.     IM clients require you to sign in

A show of hands, how many of you sign in to all of your IM clients on your phone as soon as you turn it on? Anyone? Hold on, I think I see someone way in the back with a hand up. Yeah, it’s pretty easy to forget to sign in to your IM client each and every time you power on your phone unless you need to use it right then and there. This, or rather the lack of this, is why BlackBerry Messenger is the only Mobile IM solution that has had any kind of widespread success and remains the only true threat to SMS going forward. Have you taken a look at the latest version of Ovi Chat for Nokia devices? It is more or less exactly the same as BlackBerry Messenger from top to bottom with a few exceptions. The first, which some people mistakenly think is an advantage, is that Ovi Chat is tied to your username and not your device. The second is that Ovi Chat allows you to sign out and doesn’t automatically sign you back in when you power on your device. Lastly, there are very few devices where Ovi Chat is installed out of the box. I really hope no one is sitting around Espoo scratching their heads over why Ovi Chat hasn’t gained traction. Meanwhile, ask yourself what is the sign in process for SMS.

4.     Mobile IM will NEVER be as profitable as SMS

SMS is the single most profitable weapon in mobile operators arsenal. It is an immeasurable cash cow where you’re charged a minimum of $0.15/message sent (and in some regions, received). Even if you subscribe to an unlimited text messaging package from your carrier, think about how much you pay for that each month. $10? $15? $20? Carriers are absolutely caking off of SMS and that’s not going to stop or even slow down anytime soon. They’ve tried to generate similar profit from Mobile IM but it’s simply not that easy. What is a fair amount of messages to offer in a package? What is the most attractive price point? How much control do you get over something that doesn’t belong to you? I’m sure these are the questions that carriers ask themselves when they consider pushing IM services. Take in all that then realize that we haven’t even broached the topic of SMS marketing such as businesses who take advantage of the penetration of SMS across the globe (see: Jamster)

5.     When measured in terms of communication throughput, SMS is BY FAR the fastest form of communication

Let’s be clear, the overwhelming majority of text messages sent are successfully received. No matter how many times your boyfriend says he didn’t get your texts, he’s probably lying (I know because I’ve used this lie before ) and while you might say it’s faster to just call someone, that depends entirely on whether or not they answer the phone or your call winds up in voicemail jail. If you have to deliver a message to someone that’s not of an urgent nature but still need them to get it in a timely fashion (like telling your spouse to pick up milk on their way home from the office), SMS is the most reliable option.

6.     SMS is more secure than Mobile IM

No matter what IM protocol we’re talking about, they all have the same basic framework: User A sends a messages to User B but between the time User A presses Send and User B gets the notification of a new message, that message has passed through the IM company’s central server. Yes, text messages follow a similar path but which do you think is easier to compromise? A server that allows 50-11 3rd party apps, websites and clients access it to support their IM protocol or a wireless carrier’s SMS delivery system (which I’m willing to bet most of you don’t even have a full understanding of how that system works)?

Those are 6 reasons but I’m sure if you gave me a little more time, I could give you another 6. This doesn’t mean that Mobile IM is doomed however. BlackBerry Messenger is the perfect example of instant messaging for mobile devices done right and many developers and other manufacturers have tried to duplicate. However, its biggest drawback is that it is limited to a single platform and until developers spread out across multiple platforms (including non-smartphones), SMS is sitting pretty and not even thinking of looking over its shoulder.

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