Worldwide, SMS has emerged as the cheapest, quickest, easiest form of peer-to-peer mobile communication ever known and is still growing in all regions. MMS is not a failure, in fact far from it. Forecasts suggest MMS will also generate revenues of $50bn by 2010.

Other mobile messaging technologies, (e-mail, instant messaging (MIM), and to a lesser extent push to talk (PTT) and video messaging), will grow in popularity. Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) has a strong future in certain markets, particularly the US where MIM volumes are expected to pass SMS by 2009 or 2010.

A new report from Portio Research predicts that the future for SMS is bright remaining the most widely used messaging format for some years to come with revenues estimated at 50bn USD by 2010 driven by almost 2.38 trillion messages. The report, 'Mobile Messaging Futures 2005 -- 2010' outlines progress albeit slower for other mobile messaging technologies especially mobile e-mail and instant messaging amid continued strong worldwide subscriber growth.

Despite the hype, since its launch in 2002, MMS has failed to assume the SMS mantle, hampered by interoperability issues and low handset penetration. MMS can however be considered a commercial success with similar revenue predictions as SMS by 2010 from considerably less traffic.