Over 6.1 trillion text messages were sent last year worldwide, according to a report from the International Telecommunications Union. However, analysts argue that carrier pricing for text messages as well as the advent of applications that circumvent the traditional carrier messaging controls--think Research In Motion's (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry Messenger and Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) forthcoming iMessage--will eat away at the revenue that operators make from all of those SMS and MMS messages. Will growth in other data services outweigh any drop operators see in text messaging revenue? Special report