Today SMS is 19 years old

On December 1992, 3, the first SMS was received.

Merry Christmas - wrote British computer scientist Neil Papworth on December 1992, 3. Although the message was transmitted from a computer to a colleague's (Orbitel 901) mobile phone, it is still considered the world premiere of SMS (Short Message Service) technology. The first real mobile-to-mobile SMS, according to legend, took off in 1993 from Riku Pihkonen, a Finnish trainee engineer at Nokia. At the time, no one had any idea that this would be one of the success sectors of mobile phone service. It was a by-product of improvements to improve voice transmission only and was initially used by service providers to notify customers of network failures.

source (hothardware.com)

The first paid messaging service was launched as early as 1993, introduced by the British BT Cellnet (now called O2), but SMS only really spread towards the end of the decade. 

In addition to business success, the language innovation effect is also a significant but unintended consequence. Among young users, a completely new SMS-based version of the language has developed, and texts full of abbreviations and graphic characters expressing emotions are analyzed by a number of linguists around the world. Today, the first SMS might look like this: "OMG m3rry xma5!" 

According to Mobithinking, SMS traffic will reach 8 trillion this year.

Source: MTI-Panorama