Introduction

SMS, or Short Message Service, is rapidly emerging as a multibillion dollar a year industry. A leading research firm reports that consumer spending on mobile services represents a $140 billion opportunity worldwide, with person-to-person SMS making up half of that. Portio Research reported that there were 946 billion SMSs sent in 2006. Clearly, the medium has hit the mainstream.

Reach and mobility are SMSs most powerful draws. There are 2.41 billion SMS-ready handsets in the world today, enough for a third of the world's population. In fact, some 30 countries have more than one cell phone per person.

As for mobility, anywhere a cell phone can go, a text message can go. This gives you, the service or application developer, the opportunity to deeply integrate your features into daily life. Coupled with the fact that it is a true push technology, this means that all types of information can be delivered to people wherever they are, exactly when it's most meaningful or useful.

Creating your own SMS service can be quite simple, as there are a number of different implementation options suitable to a variety of needs and circumstances. This guide will describe several of them to help you pick the option most appropriate to your needs.

However, there is more to building a successful SMS service than implementing code that sends and receives text messages. SMS presents a different set of opportunities and constraints relative to a traditional browser-based web service or desktop client application. The 160 character limit is the most obvious limit, and the "Always On Everywhere" nature of the mobile phone the most obvious opportunity, but there are a host of other less apparent factors to consider when designing your service.

So, beyond describing the mechanics of creating a SMS service, this guide seeks to describe the art of creating a good SMS service.