Text messaging to be worth $6.5bn within two years

Up to 80 billion text messages per month will be sent globally by 2003 according to a report released today.

By this time Mobile LifeStreams predicts the global market for SMS (short message service) text messages will be worth $6.5bn. During December 2000 15 billion text messages were sent worldwide and a spokeswoman for Vodafone said within her company this accounted for nine per cent of its overall revenue. However, she added this is due to increase. She said: "Vodafone expects this percentage of overall revenue will rise up to 13 per cent by 2004." Mobile LifeStreams believes text traffic will be enhanced even further with two new messaging standards, EMS (enhanced messaging service) and MMS (multimedia messaging service), which will enter the market when networks adopt 2.5G and 3G networks.