Short Message Service (SMS) has turned 25 years old with its silver jubilee as the first text message was sent on December 3, 1992.
The popular text message feature was widely applauded due to its large-scale use. The first message was compiled and sent by Sema Group software architect Neil Papworth who typed ‘Merry Christmas’ and sent it to Vodafone director Richard Jarvis. It was sent from a computer to Orbitel 901 handset.
Even the software architect wasn’t sure whether the feature will become a hit. Finnish company Nokia was the first one to launch mobile phones with SMS feature.
According to Tech Times, it took a decade to become widely used with easy send and receive options. In 1995, there were only 0.4 text messages sent per month, however, the number skyrocketed to 12.5 billion in 2006.
Despite the thriving internet world, 781 billion text messages were sent per month in June, 2017. These figures are only taken from the United States and global stats are expected to be much larger.
Tech critics now predict that SMS feature will soon become second priority with the emergence of WhatsApp, Apple s iMessage, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Viber and other social media or instant-messaging apps that run over internet.
Before increasing the character limit, Twitter had also adopted the 160-character limit used in text messages. The latest modes of communication have now evolved with constant usage of WIFI and mobile data. In these circumstances, short message service appears as a very basic, but useful tool.
