Hi Jeff,
The GSM Association says 50 billion SMS messages were sent worldwide over
GSM networks from Jan-Mar 2001 (that's 16.66 billion per month), and
forecasts the total to reach 200 billion global messages for the year 2001
(the rate was 1 billion messages per month in April 1999).
http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2001/press_releases_22.html
But I'm skeptical of your news report.
IMHO, it's unlikely that SMS can provide rich functionality comparable to
the wireless information services based on a mobile browser (Access,
Openwave, etc.) platform. Complimentary, perhaps, but ultimately limited.
Remember back in the wireline Net's early days (c. 1994-95) when
Web-to-email gateways were briefly popular? Lots of companies still didn't
provide browser-based Web access, but they did provide email. When I first
joined Fuji Xerox in 1996, we still used the Xerox-designed Star workstation
(no browser). I remember looking for Web-to-mail and FTP-to-mail gateways
that would deliver files from FTP archives or allow me to send Star-mail
messages to colleagues at other companies that had SMTP or X.25 mail. It was
fun, but the mail paradigm -- send a message/receive a message (perhaps with
a file attached) -- is fundamentally clunky.
As soon as companies (FX included) deployed browsers on all desktops, usage
of whatever-to-mail gateways dropped right off (I'd be curious to hear if
anyone still uses them).
The same will happen to SMS when mobile surfers in Europe have a browser
keitai in which the browser integrates and supports easy-to-use browsing,
SMTP (or IMAP4) mail, and GUI services like access to Web storage or to
intranet file servers, as well as offer cool i-mode-, EZWeb-, or J-Sky-like
services. In other words, they are sufficiently different technologies that
the same aims **can't** be met.
--Daniel
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Funk Jeffrey Lee [mailto:funk@rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp]
> Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 10:31 AM
> To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
> Subject: (keitai-l) SMS for ringing tones, screen savers and images
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> The enclosed article says that Alcatel, Motorola, Ericsson,
> and Siemens are
> developing an enhanced SMS technology so that users can
> download ringing
> tones, screen savers, and images using SMS. This sounds like Europe is
> aiming for some of the same applications that have been so
> popular with
> i-mode but with SMS and not the mobile internet. Different
> technologies but
> the same aims? the article somewhat disagrees with other
> sources that claim
> downloading ringing tones is already a major appllication on
> SMS. Anybody
> have more details on this? by the way, the article claims
> that 20 billion
> SMS messages are sent each month or almost 1 billion each day.
>
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/579864.asp?0nm=N13O
>
>
> Jeff Funk
> Kobe University
>
>
>
> [ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
>
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu May 31 10:30:18 2001