<p>The text message is 20 years old, and the landscape for communication is continuing to change. What does the future bode for the aging tool?</p><p>Last week the text message celebrated its 20th birthday. Since 1992, it's grown into an essential part of our everyday lives. How long it will last is the big question. Recent news from Chetan Sharma says that the service, while still 70 billion messages a month strong, saw a serious decline in the last few months, likely due to new services like Facebook Messenger and Apple's iMessage. So the question is posed: What is the future of the text message? Does it lie with SMS or Internet messaging programs?</p><p>Some believe that the SMS text isn't going anywhere. Bill Tancer of Experian Marketing Services is one of them. As far as he's concerned, the text message is the gold standard and we're in no hurry to abandon it. Tancer told us that recent research shows that the future of our market relies heavily on the young, and that they haven't stopped text messaging, but they are using a number of new services. Apple's iMessage service, Google Talk, Kik, and Facebook Messenger are all major options for mobile communication just like the text message. They've all made some inroads against traditional texting, but they remain stuck against an important element: ubiquity. Texting is available on every phone, by every wireless carrier made, by every phone manufacturer, running every operating system. It's everywhere</p><p>No service currently carries the same ubiquity as the text message, and that the ability to send messages to any phone number is still an unmatched feature compared to the text message's closest competition.</p><p><a href="http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/why-text-messages-wont-die/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13589281-happy-birthday-text-messaging">Happy Birthday, Text Messaging</a> (allvoices)</p><p><a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2012-12/11/content_16004369.htm">SMS messaging loses its text appeal</a> (China Daily)</p><p><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/gadgets/texting-comes-of-age/article4191761.ece">Texting comes of age?</a> (The Hindu)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dsMdqshabdQq5ZMTAlvm9hW-TwCeM&ned=us">16 additional articles.</a></p>