“Signs of consumers moving on from text-messaging to social media, email and IP-based messaging systems started cropping up in 2011 in advanced SMS markets like Netherlands and Philippines,” Tero Kuittinen reports for Forbes. “What we seem to be witnessing is a situation where those countries where SMS took off first during Nineties are now the first ones to see a steep decline in SMS usage.”

Kuittinen reports, “Text-messaging boom started in the United States a couple of years after SMS vanguard nations in Europe and Asia. It’s quite possible that the SMS erosion will hit AT&T and Verizon in 2012 or 2013. The ambitious new messaging plans and more organic Facebook/Twitter support of both Apple and Google could be the big threat for operator earnings growth in a year or two. As much as 20% of carrier earnings are derived from text-messaging. The fast fade of SMS usage in countries that were most obsessed with text-messaging tells us how difficult it is to project rates of decline of aging technologies – and how unfaithful consumers can be to services that they have loyally used for 15 years.”

Read more in the full article here.

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