SMS vs. IM

People who I’ve hung out with at conferences this year will tell you that I am down on mobile companies. Not just because at every conference there are new ones and some that were there previously are already gone.

I met with a mobile company at a conference in September. Their CEO, CTO, EVP Sales, EVP Programming, EVP Customer Support….the titles alone should scare you. The amount of VC money pouring into these ventures with such thin business models conjures up feelings of the late 90s.

All of these new mobile companies are so obsessed with putting content and services around SMS, that they miss the real point and opportunity.

The title of this post is inentionally WRONG. Its not SMS vs. IM. SMS IS IM. Texting on your cell phone is away from computer instant messaging. And the company that figures this out and understands how to drive at both SMS and IM is who I will declare the winner.

No surprise that its happening in Europe with Microsoft and Orange.

The gulf between mobile phone and personal computer narrowed a bit more on Wednesday when Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven Ballmer, announced an “instant messaging” product to be offered by Orange, a European cellphone carrier.

When the service starts in December, Orange subscribers will be able to conduct real-time chats by voice, text or video on their phones or personal computers, using a version of Microsoft’s messaging software.

Someone at AOL needs to wake up because the ICQ guys saw this all coming 6 years ago when they integrated SMS into ICQ.

And to all those new mobile companies: Stop looking at mobile space as a technology play and start looking at the content and marketing opportunity of instant messaging. The platform will emerge as computer desktop + sms.