SMSCountry to launch iPhone application shortly

SMSCountry, a Hyderabad-based enterprise messaging and advertisement-based free short messaging service (SMS) provider, is in the process of launching an SMS application for iPhone, said its founder and chief executive officer Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti.

“At present, there are 10 million iPhones in the market and our conservative estimate is to generate 1 million SMSes through this application. Apple already has an iAd Network, with which we will sign up and offer this free application on the App Store in a couple of weeks from now,” he told Business Standard.

Mobile advertising market is currently pegged at $2 billion globally, and is projected to be anywhere between $11 billion and $14 billion in the next three years. SMSCountry’s iPhone application will allow users to send free SMSes, and upload and save contacts.

Yerramsetti said the company already had the prototype of a social networking platform in place and was currently fine-tuning it. “Our idea is to create a simple and primitive application for both mobile and online platforms. If Youtube is for videos and Flickr for photos, our social networking application will be for SMSes,” he said, adding the new application will be launched as a by-product of its 160by2.com by the end of July 2010.

SMSCountry, founded in 2003, reported revenues of Rs 12 crore in the last financial year. Its outlook for the current fiscal is Rs 20 crore. Currently employing around 350 across 12 locations in the country, the company is planning to hire 150 more during the next financial year.

Stating that the company at present processes about 400 million SMSes every month, including enterprise and free SMSes, he said the it was looking at a three-fold growth in delivery of SMSes in the next one year.

“Right now we are present in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Kuwait, Singapore, Malaysia and India. The Indian sub-continent is what we are looking at to replicate our SMS gateway during this year, besides entering the Chinese market through local partners initially with enterprise messaging solutions,” Yerramsetti said.