The first text message was sent on December 3, 1992, by an engineer named Neil Papworth. The message “MERRY CHRISTMAS” was sent to his colleagues at Vodafone.
The message, sent in an office in Newbury signalled the beginning of a new era for communication.
Of course, Neil Papworth was not aware of its significance at the time, with text messaging not really becoming common until the following decade.
Papworth commented that he would “never have predicted that text messaging would spread into the consumer world” and explained that the system of using SMS messages was thought to be “a clever way for a company’s staff to send simple messages to one another.”
Nowadays, it seems hard to image life without SMS services and messages, with an estimated 8 trillion messages being sent this year – a figure which equates to around 15 million every minute.
This is a far different story from what was experienced earlier in the lifespan of SMS messages. In 1995, three years after the first message was sent, mobile users sent an average of just 0.4 SMS messages each month.
The turn of the millennium, however, saw text messaging become a more natural and popular form of communication for people of all ages.
The dominance of text messaging is also something which is prevalent in both the consumer and corporate world and continues to reign despite other developments in technology.
According to Portio research, the global messaging market is expected to be worth more than $300 billion (approximately £191.9 billion) by 2014 after being valued at $179.2 billion (approximately £114.6 billion) last year.
As SMS celebrates its 19th birthday this Christmas, mobile users can wish this innovative form of communication “many happy returns” for many more years to come.
