A new report from Juniper Research forecasts that revenue from text messages sent to or from an application - so-called Application-to-Person or A2P SMS - will exceed $70 billion (£42 billion) within five years. In addition, worldwide revenue from A2P messages will overtake that of person-to-person texting in 2016.
A2P messaging is already used in a wide number of situations, including advertising and marketing, financial services, television voting and ticketing.
Daniel Ashdown, author of the Mobile Messaging Report, said “While SMS is one of the oldest value-added services, it has an enduring appeal for a number of reasons. In terms of text communication it is unrivalled on the mobile device in its ubiquity – virtually every handset in the world can send and receive it. This makes it extremely appealing for brands who want to enable communication with their customers, as unlike other messaging mediums, they know it will reach almost its entire intended audience.”