SMS has emerged as the cheapest, quickest and easiest form of P2P mobile communication ever known and is still growing in all regions, newly published research has claimed.

A report from UK-based research firm Portio Research suggests that SMS will remain the most widely used messaging format for some years to come, with revenues estimated at $50bn by 2010 driven by almost 2.38 trillion messages.

The report predicts slower progress for other mobile messaging technologies, especially mobile email and instant messaging, amid continued strong worldwide subscriber growth.

Portio noted that MMS has failed to take over from SMS since its launch in 2002, a fact which is attributed to interoperability issues and low handset penetration. MMS can, however, be considered a commercial success with similar revenue predictions as SMS by 2010 from considerably less traffic.

The report advised operators to "concentrate on increasing the use of premium MMS as a marketing tool and a distribution channel while promoting the growth of cheap P2P picture messaging. When MMS becomes cheap, simple and compelling, traffic will grow and revenue will follow."

Other messaging technologies, including mobile email and mobile instant messaging, will continue to gain ground, according to the report.

However, with a large proportion of global mobile subscriber growth in the next five or six years being in low income-per-capita emerging markets, and fixed-mobile substitution back on the corporate agenda in the mature mobile markets, there seems to be plenty of life in voice and SMS.

"No other non-verbal form of communication in the world is used by so many individuals and is experiencing such a rapid expansion of its user base," the report concluded.