SOS for premium SMS?

A straw poll conducted by m-commerce software developer Valista at the recent Digital Hollywood Fall trade show forecasts growing consumer demand for more sophisticated mobile content will effectively limit the potential of premium SMS services. According to the entertainment, media, mobile and broadband execs polled at the late October event, premium SMS--widely used by European subscribers as payment for mobile content downloads--will wane in popularity as operators embrace direct-to-bill solutions. Valista cites executive concerns with the security of premium SMS as the chief culprit behind the payment platform's dim future, adding the increasing complexity and costs of mobile content downloads make authentication and authorization safeguards more critical than ever.

Without knowing what kinds of questions Valista was posing to respondents, I think it's wise to take these results with a grain of salt--the company has more than a rooting interest in the future of direct-to-bill solutions, after all. But the security questions are valid, and it is hard to envision much of a future for premium SMS, which already seems a quaint holdover from an earlier mobile era.

For more on premium SMS:
- read Digital Transactions' article