Default Thinking: Why consumer products fail

Introduction Short Message Service (SMS), or texting, is a typical killer application. It is not only popular but profitable, bringing in significant revenue to network operators. There is even a strong after market selling RingTones, info alerts and crude interactive games. A great technological irony is that such a successful product is so under appreciated. For all of the frenzied SMS marketing discussion, the product has hardly changed over the last few years. Given its success, you would think the industry would put more effort into understanding the value SMS offers to consumers and then produce new services that extend this value.