Sussex companies with their fingers on the pulse and not far from their mobile phone keypads will be told "the future is text" at an event on Thursday.
The Wired Sussex small mess-aging service (SMS) seminar is part of a programme to educate the business community about key technologies.
Executive Director Emily Aitken said: "Over the next year, we are hoping to further develop the Brighton new media cluster and help some small companies mature into medium-sized businesses.
"One important means of helping these companies to grow is providing them with information about new technologies and the business opportunities they offer.
"The SMS industry is booming and this event aims to keep us at the forefront of developments."
One of the speakers at the seminar, which brings in leading figures from across the industry, will be Mike Grenville, who runs 160 Characters, the SMS and mobile messaging association, which has more than 1,000 members.
He said: "The SMS sector has had a very low profile because many of the companies are very new and attention has been focused elsewhere.
"Lots of attention was focused in WAP developments and SMS was overlooked. Just now there's a lot of glitzy excitement surrounding the multimedia messaging service (MMS) but it's still at the trial stage and quite a long way off."
MMS will allow mobile phone users to incorporate audio, images and other rich content with traditional text messages but Mr Grenville said: "SMS not going away. Unlike WAP, where several years of hype was followed by big disappointment, SMS has been delivering since 1994."
Although industry analysts have said the text messaging market is slowing down, Mr Grenville said new business opportunities continued to drive strong growth.
He said: "There have been huge increases in peer-to-peer messaging but business use has been very small. This is what is beginning to change as companies use texting to transform how they do business."
Kevin Strong, managing director of Worthing-based 24X, which is targeting the mobile text market alongside its work on interactive television and electronic survey systems, will make a presentation at the seminar.
He will concentrate on inter-active texting, where people can send text messages and receive information in return.
He said: "What we're doing on Thursday is preaching the gospel according to SMS.
"So many people understand text messaging from the point of view of what their children do and they think it's all about downloading ring tones and display graphics.
"But we want to get across the message it is a very powerful medium for sending and receiving information 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without needing to employ someone to sit at the end of a phone line."
Mr Strong said many marketing companies were using text messages to reach new customers and "affinity" clubs were using the technology to develop stronger customer relationships.
He said the Rendezvous Casino was using text messages to contact members and provide information on the restaurant.
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