A veteran of the early days of mobile phone use in Austria will permanently disappear from the market in mid-December. The former free app provider sms.at is switching off after 24 years. At its peak, sms.at sent 30 million text messages per month, but at the time free text messaging rates were limited to mobile phone rates and credit had to be expensively purchased with pocket money.
It was the time of mobile phones with push buttons and flip buttons, when the tariff included a maximum of 10 free SMSs and mobile phone credit was still sold on a scratch card, when sms.at began its triumphant march into the domestic online world. Since 1999, the website has offered free messaging from PCs and laptops.
30 million text messages per month
At the best of times, sms.at said it had 800,000 users and more than 30 million text messages were sent via the platform per month, owner Link Mobility Austria announced on Wednesday. Recently there were only 100,000 text messages per month.
Nowadays the platform is mainly used by business customers, especially for promotions and the like. “SMS has rapidly become less important for private users in recent years. Messenger services have largely taken over their role,” the operators said in a press release. In times of WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok, the website, whose design has hardly changed in 24 years, actually seems a bit old-fashioned.
“Decision taken with pain in the heart”
“Due to the developments in the field of private SMS sending, it is with a heavy heart that we have now made the decision to discontinue the platform,” says Josef Grabner, Managing Director of LINK Mobility Austria, the operator of sms.at. From October 4, private customers can no longer take out subscriptions and new registrations are no longer possible. On December 13, 2023, sms.at will cease its activities completely.
By the way, the short message website is actually an Austrian product. It was developed in 1999 by Jürgen and Martin Pansy from Graz and was first acquired by an Italian media group in 2007. It later changed hands several times, most recently sms.at was sold to Norwegian Link Mobility Group. In October 2009, sms.at was the most used social media website after Facebook.
“Hi and baba!”
Today, on the homepage itself, you say goodbye to users: “An era is coming to an end. sms.at says goodbye and baba!” And many people who may associate one or two childhood memories with sms.at will probably hear the farewell with at least a little sadness.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
