2024-05-13 15:04:25
Texting is a thing of the past: the era of SMS is coming to an end. Here you can find out why text messages have no future.
The importance of SMS (Short Messaging Service) is constantly decreasing. Instead, more and more people are using online services such as WhatsApp, Threema or Signal: In 2023, around 891 billion such instant messages were sent over the Internet in Germany – almost eleven percent more than in the previous year. Each regular user of these services sent an average of 379 short messages per month. This emerges from data from the Federal Network Agency.
Record year 2012: 59.8 billion SMS sent
The use of SMS, on the other hand, has continued to decline: in 2023, only 5.3 billion SMS were sent in Germany – a decrease of 0.5 billion compared to 2022. For comparison: in 2019 there were still 7.9 billion.
SMS reached its peak in 2012: At that time, 59.8 billion SMS were sent in Germany alone. However, with the increasing spread of smartphones and online services, a steady decline began.
SMS is older than you think
The development of text messaging services was driven forward by European telecommunications companies as early as the 1980s. In 1984, the Finn Matti Makkonen suggested using unused capacity in the mobile network for secure communication. This led to the first thoughts about setting up an SMS service.
The final standard for SMS was adopted in early 1989. Among other things, it stipulated that an SMS should be a maximum of 160 characters long. The simple reason: The developers had observed that most postcards and telexes contained fewer than 160 characters.
That was in the first text message
Finally, on December 3, 1992, the first text message was sent via the SMS service from a PC to a mobile phone on the British Vodafone network. The content of the message read “Merry Christmas” and the recipient was a Vodafone employee who was at a company Christmas party at the time.