The Text Message/SMS Turns 19 Years Old

The first text message sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1992, a man named Neil Papworth using a personal computer to Richard Jarvis Vodafone using an Orbitel 901 handset.

The text of the message was "Merry Christmas".

The technology behind SMS is 27-years old, having first developed in the Franco-German cooperation in 1984 by mobile Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert. It was then eight years later, was "Merry Christmas" text sent.

SMS is 19 years old today, since then, SMS technology has a long road to today's dominant mobile messaging scene comes. In 2010, SMS generated $ 114.6 billion in revenue worldwide, but many believe it is just the beginning. Experts estimate that mobile networks will earn 726 billion dollars of short messages over the next five years. So while smartphone applications and services such as Apple's GroupM iMessage to make larger slices of the text field, text is not abandoning its mobile messaging throne anytime soon.