Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lee who wrote (19865)	4/29/2002 3:03:54 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 34857

<< Sorry Eric but SMS was a killer app the day it became available to the public. >> I beg to differ with you, Steve ... ... and statistics certainly don't bear it out. Just take a look at the growth curves. Here's one (and it only covers last two years): gsmworld.com The first commercial SMS services were launched in late 1994. It was March 1999 before 1 billion SMS messages were sent in a single month in Europe. Growth then explooded: 1 billion March 1999 2 billion October 1999 3 billion December 1999 4 billion March 2000 5 billion July 2000 6 billion August 2000 12 billion December 2000 We are fast approaching 1 billion SMS messages per day (worldwide). It took considerable time and a lot of coordinated effort on behalf of the carriers for exponential growth to begin in most countries where it was introduced and the reasons you cite were in fact inhibitors to SMS growth in the early going. << Whether the technology existed in 1992 was irrelevant because the handsets to use it were not available. It has only been just less than 4 years since you could SMS between different networks and even less time since you could send international text msgs. >> I thought that is EXACTLY what I just said ... or at least attempted to say. Permit me to repeat the list of enablers of exponential growth of SMS: * Introduction of SMS Mobile Originate (MO) * Interoperability/Roaming * SMS Mobile Originate for prepaid subscribers * Pricing Evaluation, Sensible Pricing & Billing * Handset features - Predictive text - Enhanced SMS (Nokia Smart Messaging) * National SMS interconnect agreements * Third party platforms for cross technology messaging To which I should add: * Gen Y - SMS on prepay * Marriage of WAP + SMS * Portals, ringtones, screen savers ... and OBTW, handsets with MO SMS were available long before SMS started to hit its stride in early 1999 (although they weren't necessarily easy to use, were limited to text, and available on a small percentage of models). ... and so it will (hopefully) proceed with GPRS. The E2E Task Force is essentially modelling their approach to implementation of INTEROPERABLE (network to network, country to country, continent to continent) GPRS Features and Services on lessons learned from SMS, and prioritizing EMS, and to a much greater degree MMS, and LBS to kick start GPRS. It will take Java content and apps, and browsers (WAP 2.0), and color displays (which require color content to have appeal) and other enablers such as cHTML and xHTML and CSS, to extend GPRS usage beyond the messaging realm. It is not an accident that TIM in Italy, the driver of the M-Services initiative, was the first to reach the 1 million GPRS sub mark, and this with aggressive marketing started only in November, and centered on EMS. << Many people's phone bills now have a larger SMS component than voice and there are popular billing plans that are optimized for SMS. It was not a case of gradual acceptance but an instant hit. >> SMS now accounts for about 10% of ARPU in Europe. << By contrast, WAP is available on most phones in western Europe and GPRS on about 35 - 40 % of them >> GPRS is NOT available yet on 35 - 40 % (or anywhere near that number) of the phones in Europe. End of the year, maybe 35 - 40% of phones in shops in Europe but that's perhaps a tad high. Only 8 million GPRS phones were shipped worldwide last year (2% of total shipped) and real volume ramps are only now starting. Approximately 60 to 80 million GPRS handsets are forecast to ship worldwide (15% to 20% of total) in 2002. The real ramp will start when the enablers I mentioned above and the platforms to support them are available. Hopefully user acceptance will be considerably faster than it was with SMS. - Eric -