The Chicago Chamber of Commerce is hosting a search engine conference in mid November and I’ll be speaking about mobile, covering both current and future trends. This post is a preview of some thoughts I have in the area. This is a re-post of the article that appeared on the Chamber’s website.
During the iPhone 4S announcement a few weeks ago, Apple put up a slide with a pie chart that showed they have about a 5% market share of ALL cell phones, which is the way they look at it, because they said eventually all phones will be smart phones.
But, we’re not there yet. Most phones on this planet, especially in non-developed countries, are still the old Nokia flip phones, with barely any “smart” features, let alone internet. But the one thing that all phones have is text messaging (SMS). The technology was developed in the 80s but it wasn’t used until the early 90s.
The craziest thing about SMS is about 2.5 BILLION people use it. Billion. The world only has 7 billion people on it. And there are 200,000 texts sent per SECOND, every second, and that number is only increasing. Name me one other thing other than food, water, or air that reaches more people.
I’ve done some research into the pervasiveness and engagement level of text messaging over different demographics, including teens. For them, it’s not uncommon to send 100 texts per day, and for 94% of people, it’s the first thing they check in the morning and last thing they check at night.
Facebook would kill for these numbers.
You can’t talk about mobile without talking about text messaging. But the thing that gets me, is it’s traditionally been a 1-to-1 communication vehicle, and more recently with the introduction of group texting apps like GroupMe, 1-to-many.
Apple’s even gotten into the fray with their new iMessage feature in iOS 5.
But the thing that’s struck me, and continues to baffle me, is that we haven’t seen much, if any, innovation or disruption in the space. I feel it in my bones, someone will crack the code and figure out a way to build an enterprising app around SMS.
Twilio is a startup that allows developers to integrate voice calls and text messaging into any applications extremely easily with only a few lines of code. But it’s still mostly used for signing up for things (i.e., click this link to install this app), notify people of things (You won a brand new car! Wait, what?), or sell things (stupid spammers).
Actually a friend of mine, a brilliant developer name Ricky Robinett (great name, eh?), received a lot of press from major media outlets, including Forbes and CNN, for his minimal app that uses Twilio to create value using texting. It’s called Fake Girlfriend, which lets you text a number and it will respond with canned girlfriend-esque responses.
“Hey Micky, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you blow my mind!”
So long story short, what do I think about mobile? I think people need to think harder about text messaging aside from just 140-character messages between you and your friends.
Because everyone likes seeing that little notification badge resting in the upper right corner of their messages app.
