SMS was once described by Vodafone founder, Sir Chris Gent, as “the closest thing to pure profit ever invented”. But, a lot has changed since then. As person to person SMS moves into decline, another form of SMS is rapidly growing.
The Application to Person (A2P) SMS messaging market has been on the rise for the past few years as both enterprise organisations and service providers turn to this form of messaging to enhance customer experience and consequently their engagement. This two-way communication Messaging Market between businesses and their customers is only expected to continue growing, in fact according to recent analyst reports this market is set to grow from USD 55.49 billion in 2016 to USD 71.60 billion by 2021.
A2P messaging services have been used across various industries, including Government, IT and Telecoms, Healthcare, Travel and Tourism and Retail and eCommerce to name just a few. Out of all of these, the Retail and eCommerce vertical is expected to hold the largest market share due to the constant growth in the number of internet users, the rapid rise of smartphones, and the increasing number of tech-savvy consumers. In my mind, increased mobile marketing by both marketers and application developers as well as the overall growth in mobile payments and banking applications have also contributed to the rise of the A2P and P2A messaging market.