London: Matti Makkonen, known as the father of SMS after developing the idea of sending messages via mobile networks, has died. Makkonen, a Finnish national, passed away on Friday at the age of 63 following serious illness, Finnish language daily Ilkka reported.

Despite being known as the father of SMS, Makkonen was often quick to point out that he did not invent the technology single-handedly.

In 2012, he told BBC News -- in an SMS interview -- that he believed texting in some form would be around "forever".

Speaking on the 20th anniversary of the first text message, Makkonen said that he considered the development of SMS a joint effort and that it was Nokia who helped to popularise the service.

"The real launch of the service, as I see it, was when Nokia introduced the first phone that enabled easy writing of messages (Nokia 2010 in 1994)," he had said. Makkonen said he did not use "txt spk" himself, though he pointed out that texting could be thought of as having had an impact on the development of language.