Popularity Of SMS Based Services
Short Message Service is being used globally to create innovative services for informative and also competitive in nature. It has become widely used because of its simplicity and efficiency. High mobile subscriber penetration rate and the familiarity of SMS usage in many countries also provide a huge readily available customer base to tap on to for the new services launched.
Some examples of popular SMS based services are:
Reality Competition Voting
Reality TV Competitions has taken the world by storm from singing competitions to talent competitions and even beauty contests. One of the main reasons for this is the ability for TV viewers to participate in deciding the outcome of the competition. SMS is the mechanism that is utilised for voting purposes. The popular singing competition American Idol generated a total of 78 million messages in their 2008 season.
Mobile Content Download
Mobile Content downloads are popular especially by the younger generation of subscribers. Mobile Ringtone, Wallpaper and Operator Logos are the common contents that are downloaded by subscribers. The ability to be unique and personalisation are the main drivers for this service.
News Update
News agencies are finding additional ways to remain attractive to their readers and more tech savvy audience. Many of them are now offering SMS notification of the latest breakthrough news and headlines to their subscribers. This information is usually sent to the subscribers before updates are done to the news agencies online portal, providing a “premium” level of service.
Customer Relationship Management
In a competitive economical environment, the need to maintain a continual communication with their customers has become an important agenda for many companies. Many are turning to SMS as an avenue to achieve this due to cost and its reach. SMS is being used to notify customers of latest promotions, new product release, latest company news and just for festive greetings.
TV Chats
The mass media are also turning to SMS as a mechanism to reach out to their audience. TV Chats is one of the services that are launched by TV Stations where their audience can send in text messages and have their messages being displayed on the TV to communicate with friends.
Information Request
Services to allow the request of information by mobile subscribers are also popular due to its simplicity. A few examples are stock prices, directory services, movie show-time and gaming results. Subscribers are willing to pay for these services as they would like to get information on the go easily.