We admit that in the US the SMS story is not well understood and that there is some way to go. It does limit our development over there,' said Vanlerberghe. The company expects to announce details of UK partners this month. Quios has 400,000 users with 6000 new subscribers joining daily. Last week it signed up Slashdot, the online Unix magazine, which has over half a million readers.
Analysts say that SMS services are of most interest to young mobile users.
Quios said that half its subscribers fall into this category. The company has been beaten to launch by many major operators and smaller independent services such as Red Message. It will be very competitive and Quios has to differentiate itself. It will be difficult competing against the big-name operators and portals like Yahoo,' said Bond. It may come down to how well they use intelligent search engines,' she said.