Will the SMS be around for another generation?

T2ul, E2eg, FYEO...any of these ring a bell? If they do appear like Greek, you obviously don't belong to the SMS generation. SMS, or short message service, celebrated its 20th birthday in December 2012, and if you were born before that, here's a quick tutorial in SMS lingo: T2ul stands for 'talk to you later,' E2eg for 'ear to ear grin', and FYEO for, what else but 'for your eyes only.'

Although the first SMS was sent by an engineer, from his computer to a mobile device on Vodafone's UK network, it was only in 1994 that Nokia launched a mobile phone that let people easily write messages. What Nokia made popular is today proving to be its Achilles Heel as a new generation of smartphones coupled with a proliferation of applications like BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and WhatsApp relegate text messaging to just another service.

According to Vodafone India's latest half-yearly numbers, the company's messaging revenues have fallen 18.8% over a year ago; and there has been a 22% drop in person-to-person SMS over the same period. Messaging revenue for Vodafone India comprises person-to-person SMS, MMS, bulk SMS, SMS termination and international roaming SMS. Bjas Murthy, associate director for voice products & services at Vodafone India, attributes the dip in India to evolution of smartphones, implementation of the new unsolicited commercial communication( UCC) process in September 2011 and an SMS ban in mid-August 2012 for national security reasons that stifled customer usage. "These have impacted usage patterns of customers in the last few quarters.

What happened during this phase fuelled the growth of instant messaging, BBM, WhatsApp and other alternatives. The emergence of digital adopters and datasavvy customers resulted in a shift in usage, from traditional messaging to new-age messaging platforms," explains Murthy.