This is a piece about mobile messaging – SMS to be precise. Remember SMS, that mobile messaging medium that has been decimated by non-SMS chat applications like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and many others? Well, it is still very much around, live and well and, I’ll say it: prospering.
Author: William Dudley
Mobile World Congress (MWC) is the record-breaking annual get-together of over 108,000 attendees in Barcelona, Spain, interested in mobile, 5G, connected cars, devices, augmented reality, virtual reality, cloud computing, IoT, and much, much more. As I do most years, I attended (I believe this might have been my ninth). MWC is the most important event for the mobile-focused industry. This year, the theme was “Mobile: The Next Element.” The idea of this theme was to “reflect the elemental role of mobile in the lives of billions of people around the world.” While I was quite busy with over 15 meetings and discussions in our massive (and popular) SAP stand, I was able to walk around occasionally during the 4 days to try to get a better understanding of this year’s major themes.
I published my first set of mobile predictions in January 2008. This is my tenth installment. My blog has had several iterations since it was initially part of the Sybase company blog space (we were known as Sybase 365, back then). When SAP acquired Sybase, most of my postings were migrated to the original SCN for Mobile area and now to the “new” SAP Community Network blogs. Some of the very old postings (before February 2011) are unfortunately no longer available in existing SAP archives.
Over the past few years interesting phenomena has been occurring in the United States as well as Canada. Consumers continue to text each other (called Person-to-Person or P2P); however, unlike in many other regions such as Asia-Pacific and Europe, they continue to use SMS at rates not enjoyed in these other regions for several years.
Worldwide, SMS-based mobile messaging continues to evolve and innovate. Nowhere is this more apparent than in A2P or enterprise messaging. Numerous analysts have forecast that enterprise messaging (or A2P messaging as it is sometimes called) will continue growth and prominence through at least the rest of this decade. Why is this?
At the 2016 Facebook’s F8 Developer’s conference, a new no-password login solution was announced called Account Kit. Account Kit is designed to be an alternative login facility for people who either don’t want to use a social login such as Facebook or a non-password login. Users are given a choice between either email or their mobile phone number as their “identity.” After providing one or the other, a one-time code is sent via email or SMS to their mobile device. Access to the account is then granted.
Ok, this is definitely a late 2016 predictions article – especially since it is the week after Mobile World Congress 2016. But, in my defense, not THAT much happens until after MWC, so maybe I’m not cheating so much. This is my ninth (yes 9th!) annual prediction blog posting.
Have you ever forgotten a password? I know that I have. I do all the time, in fact, although over the last year or two, I’ve gotten better at managing my password schemes (yes, I have schemes that I’ve memorized to generate new passwords). But forgotten password recovery is a “popular” mechanism in which bad guys can gain access to your account. So, we must incorporate a number of checks to disrupt and prevent attempts to gain access to accounts.
In the past few years, the incidents of major data breaches as well as hacking into personal accounts for not only public people, but also not-so-public people, seem to be on the increase. In June, 2014, McAfee recently published a study indicating that hackers are costing consumers and companies between $375 and $575 billion… annually! Furthermore, losses connected to personal information, such as stolen credit card data, have amounted to over $150 billion. We’ve all had instances of unsubstantiated charges appearing on our credit card statements. These are usually handled by the credit card companies, with little or no liability for us personally. I am hoping that as contactless payment options and EMV cards become more ubiquitous, we will start to see the great reduction or elimination of these types of fraudulent charges and activities.
Once again September 9th was the date for the announcement of a new slate of Apple iPhone devices – this year gives us the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus with more new exciting features including 3D Touch and an upgraded 12 Megapixel camera.
While all these new features are certainly important, let’s once again look at the Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus LTE support. This year, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models bring us either 22 or 23 LTE bands (depending on the model…