You might think that it's a complete waste of time typing in messages of max 160 characters when you might as well call the person and just tell him what you want. You might even think that it's impossible to type in a message within a reasonable amount of time. The people sending close to 10 billion SMS messages per month (world wide) don't seem to mind. (Remembering that the price per message is around USD 0.15 in most countries)

Besides sending messages, SMS can be used as a means to transport data to a handset. This includes ringing tones and operator logos which is big business at least in some countries in Europe. But then we Europeans always were a bit strange.

In addition, and what has become even more popular with the introduction of WAP, there's the possibility to send phone configuration data over SMS. This means that a WAP browser can in effect be remote configured from a service provider or mobile operator. However, as this involves having to stick to a standard, not all handset manufacturers support this feature.

SMS can also be used while we wait for WAP's PUSHing feature. An SMS message can originate from a content server which the recipient can use to link directly to a URL. Unfortunately, very few WAP enabled phones support this "clickable URL" functionality in SMS messages.

SMS Tools