By: Chris Brubaker

Happy Birthday text messaging. It’s been 15 years now since the first text message was sent. In December 1992, a company called Airwide Solutions had one of its employees send the very first text message which read “Merry Christmas”. Few realized what the new technology would offer, yet as the technology expanded text messaging would grow for the next 15 years at astounding rates.

In 1995, three years after the first text message was sent consumers that had access to text messaging were sending texts at a rate of .4 texts per user per month. Jump five years later in 2000, that number ballooned to 35 text’s sent per user per month a total of about 12 Million text sent every month. Current statistics put text messaging as of December 2006 at 18 Billion text messages sent every month in the US alone. The affordability and compatibility text messaging offers across all carriers helps explain this incredible growth and acceptance by consumers.

Even with this aging 15-year-old technology, experts are painting a picture of double-digit growth. Projections for 2010 put worldwide text messages sent at 2.3 trillion. Not only is text messaging growing fast it’s also a making money hand over foot, text messaging for carriers has approximately 90% profit margins. The estimations right now for 2010 are that those 2.3 trillion text messages will bring in about $72.5 Billion dollars.

With no slow down in sight, many companies are expected to jump on board with SMS marketing and promotional campaigns trying to engage the consumer through this popular medium. As SMS grows carriers will be looking to continue the success of the text message over to expanded services such as picture and video messaging, offering more ways for consumers to stay connected. It will be interesting to see how text messaging grows over the next 15 years.

Denver Real Estate