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Text celebrates 15 years – can you believe it?

Posted in General, Media, Digital, Mel Varley, Latest reporters' blogs December 17th, 2007 by Elspeth

The mobile world has recently celebrated the 15 year anniversary of the text message – the scary thing is that most technology has evolved during our lifetimes and we’re not that old. What’s next for a sector that’s done it all?

There’s an age old saying that if you reach the top quickly, the only way to go is back down. And for everything, this point must be reached.

When the iPod first launched a couple of years ago, a few people were sceptical about buying one as mobile companies had already began including mp3 technology in their handsets. Just a few years later, Apple has integrated them both, with great success. However, it was just the next logical step.

Just think, about 15 years ago when the very first text message was sent, it was on a screen that you could only fit one word at a time and on a handset that could rival a brick. When mobile handsets started to take off and weren’t just fashion accessories for Wall Street anymore, we saw a number of changes made to them over a very short period of time…which ended up with the finished product we are all so fond of today.

The mobile phone has now become a personal item – and it’s hard to find two people in a group of friends with the same handset. Manufacturers have now included text, internet, camera, phone, mp3 and TV in their handsets…and the list could go on.

The mobile phone will one day become the one item we can’t live without. A survey earlier this month revealed that more people are likely to go home if they’ve forgotten their phone but not if they’ve left their keys or wallet.

This makes it hard to imagine what 15 years ago was like. The age before every household relied on mobiles, the internet, digital TV and DVD’s as entertainment.

Now it seems we can spend all day on the internet and still have more work to do. We have a landline as well as the internet and email but still manage to receive an average of three calls a day on our mobile and up to 20 text messages.

You can’t pick-up a newspaper without reading about last night’s TV and many people would be out of a job if it wasn’t for reality TV. Fifteen years ago we sat around the family table playing board games with a packet of crisps on a Saturday night. Now we order Dominos pizza through the ‘red’ button and play DVD’s that we’ve most likely seen a hundred times before.

In terms of marketing and the economy as a whole, technology is the richest sector in the world. It is responsible for communication and delivering it with convenience. Digital TV has given marketers more channels to advertise on, the internet opened up a whole new platform and mobile is an emerging market.

With that in mind, has technology changed our lives for the better? And whatever mobile does do next, will it take away something from our past?