SMS Growth Slows, Some Worry

Text messaging has been one of the most profitable services for carriers for years with profit margins reaching 80 percent, but growth is slowing.

The most-recent data from the CTIA suggests growth of about nine percent. That shouldn't surprise. Text messaging is a universal feature of all phones, and texting has grown quite popular. But no market grows indefinitely.

Apple's recent announcement of its own iOS messaging capability obviously has people wondering whether that capability will eat into carrier text messaging revenue. It's hard to say. Captive services are useful within the iOS community, but few captive communications media achieve widespread use until there is full interoperability.

At least in the U.S. market, many users have text messaging plans that are functionally or actually "unlimited," eliminating the economic driver to substitute iOS messaging for text messaging.

As SMS growth is slowing down, is a new era of free messaging coming up?