We've gone on a back and forth journey since day 1. Unless you can convince everyone to use jabber and irc your now stuck. A lot of the modern fragmentation probably started due to bbm. Then you have imessage and now a boat load of WhatsApp, Facebook, Qik competitors. What we need is a standard message format that allows Devs to write their own frontend. Oh yeah, we did. SMS. Ok we need video, pictures and emoji's for every conceivable thought or emotion though. Oh yeah, we we did. MMS.

Unfortunately, unless the big messaging firms open their APIs again or a new contender promoting some big new feature and a workable API this won't change. Or we just have to wait for a Pidgin of mobile formats.