Is Samsung ChatON wants to kill SMS?

Is Korea-based smartphone maker Samsung quietly trying to kill SMS (text) messaging?

Samsung has started porting to its smartphones its cross-platform Web-based "ChatON" messaging client app, tech site TechCrunch reported.

The web version of the messaging client is likely to work on most feature phones and computers as well, it added.

"ChatON" had been in the works, with Samsung indicating ChatON will be a cross-platform service.

"Now, with the web app, the crusade is seemingly complete. ChatON users can easily communicate using either their platform’s app or just a web browser. Accounts are linked, so no matter what device you’re rocking, you’ll be available. See ya later, text messages!" TechCrunch said.

Another article on TechCrunch said ChatON is to go live next month in over 120 countries and 62 languages.

On feature phones, the ChatON ervice allows for text, images, calendar appointment and contact sharing.

But on smartphones, it offers extra options, such as the ability to comment on each other’s profiles, send multimedia messages that combine text and audio, and view their own “Interaction Rank,” which displays how active they are on the ChatOn network.

The new web-based app also allows users to group chat, have 1:1 conversations, and supports attachments, emoticons and more.

Yet, TechCrunch noted carriers are reportedly losing major revenue from services like ChatON that use a data connection rather than traditional messaging rates.

"While text messages are essentially locked into a 2003-ish feature set, apps like Samsung’s ChatOn and Apple’s Messages are free to roll out innovative features to users anytime. I say good riddance. Death to SMS and it’s crazy cost," it said.

ChatON goes cross-platform

ChatON is a cross-platform mobile chat service similar to RIM’s BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) and is slated to support a variety of mobile operating systems.

Such OSes include Samsung’s own mobile operating system, Android, feature phones and even competitors’ platforms, including iOS and BlackBerry.

Social media eating into carrier revenues?

A third TechCrunch story said Twitter, Facebook and other social networks may be eating up revenues.

It cited the analyst firm of Ovum, part of the Informa Group, has estimated that operators lost $13.9 billion in SMS revenue in 2011, as customers used services like Twitter and Facebook to message each other instead of the carriers’ own text messaging services.

TechCrunch also cited a separate report from mobile analytics firm Bytemobile showing huge growth in the use of social media on mobile — with operators getting virtually no benefit as a result.

Bytemobile, using data it gathers from its tier-one carrier customers, found that the average mobile user spends around nine minutes per day each on Facebook and YouTube on mobile.

"There is a caveat, of course: carriers are still making money from people using their phones to use social networks: users are, after all, still buying 3G and 4G data plans; and many (but not all) carriers also roll public Wi-Fi connectivity into those plans," TechCrunch said.

But it said it is questionable whether in the short term that incremental data revenues for tweets, status updates and check-ins, and the more substantial data usage from services like YouTube, can offset the loss from the more lucrative messaging services that operators built up and still count on for revenues.

"Longer term, Ovum predicts that by 2016 mobile data will bring in $419 billion in revenues for operators, out of a total service revenues of $1,047 billion," it said.


[source GMA]
[via GMA]