Last week’s Ofcom Market Communications Report highlighted the exponential growth of mobile data services. But as mobile data specialist Acision points out, a more intriguing (and overlooked) statistic to emerge from the report was the sustained growth of SMS. The company points out that, despite the increasingly popularity of mobile social networking, vanilla-flavoured SMS has once again proved why it remains one of operators’ strongest data revenue streams, with more than 100bn text messages sent in the UK during 2009 – equivalent to 1,700 texts per person, up from the 1,200 texts per person sent in 2008.

Acision head of messaging, Taco Schoute, attributes the consistent growth of SMS to its ever-widening adoption beyond peer-to-peer messaging, such as social networking, enterprise applications, advertising and machine-to-machine communication. He says: “The enduring success of SMS among users is intimately connected to its ease of use, low cost and reach. With its growing ubiquity as a means of updating, informing and alerting in business communication processes, enterprises are also increasingly using mobile messaging for delivering consistently higher levels of service to their customers.

“For mobile services providers and their customers, this will mean a far wider range of services that are faster, more relevant, more effective and more flexible than ever before. From text reminders to personalised content, enterprise applications to consumer-facing offerings, these services will not only enrich the end-user experience but open up significant new revenue channels. For instance, Juniper Research recently revealed that global mobile banking services will be generating 90bn text messages per annum by 2015, as banks seek to utilise SMS as a means of enhancing customer communications and services.”

But Schoute says that operators must innovate in order to capture this opportunity for new revenue streams from SMS: “The pace of development and change within the mobile landscape puts operators at risk of becoming ‘bitpipe’ providers,” he says. “In order for them to maintain competitive advantage as mobile service enablers, they must seek to enrich the services they offer by leveraging the network and subscriber intelligence at their disposal.

“Using intelligence around location, identity, presence status and profile, they can deliver more targeted and relevant offerings to subscribers. This new generation of mobile services providers will be uniquely equipped to deliver compelling and personalised offerings to both businesses and consumers, such as group messaging and signatures – supporting the operator in sustaining SMS revenue streams as the messaging market continues to evolve.”