Fixed Mobile Convergence

SMS is the fastest growing mobile segment in the U.S. today and can be a highly effective way to reach consumers.

“The performance of SMS over the last five years has been staggering and remains so mainly because it is cheap, easy to use, convenient, discreet and universally acceptable to some 4 billion consumers worldwide,” according to a new report by Portio Research. “During 2009, SMS continued to grow in all markets and the report confidently predicts that it will continue to do so for several more years. In 2009 worldwide SMS traffic topped five trillion messages, and that figure is set to exceed 10 trillion in 2013.”

Of course, SMS is just another term for texting. And while a lot of that texting is between individuals, SMS is also a great business-to-consumer tool give it’s a technology that’s well understood, widespread and offers open rates close to 100 percent, said Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell (News - Alert) CEO.

Clickatell offers companies the ability to send SMS messages anywhere in the world via a broadband-equipped computer. The company also provides interfaces to ERP and other applications to enable SMS services to interface with such systems.

“You can’t have a mobile strategy without SMS,” said de Villiers, adding that every single mobile device in the world has the ability to text and that the average SMS gets read within four minutes.