SMS vs. mobile email: Which is the 'killer app'?
By Andrew R. Hickey, News Writer
12 Jun 2006
Day in, day out, pre-teens and teens bombard friends with text messages, flooding in-boxes and inching up cell phone bills at 10 cents a pop. But it appears the kiddies may be early adopters of a technology that some experts suggest may be more valuable to enterprises than mobile email.
Short Message Service (SMS), more commonly known as text messaging, is getting more use than mobile email. And although that use may not be ringing mobile email's death knell, it may open some eyes among enterprise network engineers.
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"It makes a lot more sense for certain field positions [where mobile email could be considered] overkill," Weldon said. Warehouse and manufacturing plant workers may not have a need for mobile email, she said, but there still could be instances where they need to receive information quickly.
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SMS is more limited than email, since each message can contain no more than 160 characters. Some service providers are waking up, though. Weldon said certain carriers are offering a sort of "SMS on steroids" that can handle up to 500 characters per message.
SMS is also inherently cheaper. For mobile email, a company needs a server, a slew of devices, and licensing agreements. SMS can be built into typical cell phone plans. Some plans offer unlimited SMS for a fixed price or charge roughly five to 10 cents per message sent or received.
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