SMSmart

Access Mobile Applications Without Data

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

As society becomes increasingly dependent on the internet, data access has become a near necessity for mobile users. We depend on applications such as Maps, News, and Yelp in our daily lives. Yet, there are two issues. First, mobile data is far from ubiquitous, especially in emerging markets like India. Building infrastructure and setting up towers is a slow and expensive process. Second, even once the infrastructure for data catches up, it will not be free. Trends show carriers such as Verizon and AT&T moving away from unlimited data models to plans capped at as low as 500MB/month. SMSmart is an Android application that allows you to use popular applications such as Maps, News, and Search without using any data. In SMSmart, every user action is mapped to a structured text message. For example, getting directions via Maps is mapped to a structured text message that is sent by SMSmart to our servers. The servers then parse the message and return the appropriate data as a response text message. Our application listens for these messages and renders the appropriate user interface. SMSmart is a viable alternative to using data. We are providing customers with one more option in their consumption of web content. We do this via SMS, a far more ubiquitous and economical medium. View a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiKMpvGrBe8.