SMS Text Messaging Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

The humble text message is celebrating its 20^th birthday today. The first ever SMS was sent by Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old British engineer, on 3 December 1992.

Papworth used his computer to send “Merry Christmas”, despite having 160 characters at his disposal, to an Orbitel 901 mobile phone, changing the way that we communicate.

Last year more than 150 billion text messages were sent in the UK, almost triple the 51 billion sent in 2006, but as the SMS enters its third decade, there are signs that our love affair with texting could be cooling slightly.

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The first half of 2012 saw two consecutive quarterly declines in the volume of messages sent in the UK, according to Ofcom. From a peak total of 39.7 billion sent in the last quarter of 2011, numbers fell to 39.1 billion in the first quarter of 2012 and to 38.5 billion the following quarter.

It has been suggested that alternative forms of text-based communications, such as instant messaging and social networks, have redirected some traffic. One in four Brits currently uses a smartphone, while Facebook has more than one billion users. However, the average UK consumer still sends around 50 texts every week.

“When texting was first conceived many saw it as nothing more than a niche service,” said James Thickett, Ofcom director of research. “But texts have now surpassed traditional phone calls and meeting face to face as the most frequent way of keeping in touch for UK adults, revolutionising the way we socialise, work and network.”

“For the first time in the history of mobile phones, SMS volumes are showing signs of decline,” he added. “However the availability of a wider range of communications tools like instant messaging and social networking sites, mean that people might be sending fewer SMS messages, but they are ‘texting’ more than ever before.”

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