If SMS is the now, then what's in the future? Part 1

I got sent an email yesterday from a mobile data marketing information report something or other - basically it was a website that complied a whole heap of information regarding mobile services and chucked it into a report that you could buy.

One of the news articles they had was that the world is nearing on 50% total penetration, that mean every second person in the world now has, or will have very shortly a mobile phone - when you consider the sheer number of impoverished people across the globe that's actually a huge number!

I know from talks that the CEO of Vodafone gave at one particular conference mentioned that it was their goal to have more mobile phones in the global market than LAN lines, which is also happening with an impressive growth at the moment!

Coming back to the site I was having a look at, there was one line that said something like "SMS is the most popular form of messaging in the world" - which in itself probably astounds those that developed it in the first place (and the sounds of networks rubbing their hands) who never guessed that what they had developed would ever be commercially viable.

So here's my question, what's next? What will be the best thing since sliced toast, or in this case SMS?

Some would say with the popularity of Blackberry's - and the fact that they are developing their handsets to become more phone than PDA in an attempt to develop the broader consumer market that it may be email? But it's already littered with rubbish that no one ever reads, so I can't see that happening too much.

If I were one of those guys that get paid to visualise the future of technology, I would visualise Bluetooth being developed for long distance - maybe something similar to mobile phones where there are a number of towers interconnected through a network. You would be able to paid yourselves into a network of friends and family and anyone else that you wanted to include.

To give it a more clear picture, it could be the messaging version of Facebook for example, you can accept/decline a contact to be included into your network - it would also solve issues with SPAM and viruses because you would only allow people that you knew and trusted into the group - anyone on the outside would be unable to communicate with you.

I'm not so sure how this would work in real life, nor am I sure that you could also include VoIP services into the network either - then there are the power issues and battery life of the equipment you use, and so on, but if we can think of it then there must be some possibility in it.

I have another possible, although much further down the track, and more sci-fi based on some stuff happening right now!

Cheers,
C