SMS to remain more popular than messaging apps

Mobile operators’ SMS revenues may be under pressure from messaging apps such as WhatsApp, but the overall SMS market is still expected to grow over the next five years. Informa Telecoms & Media forecast that global SMS revenues will increase at a compound annual rate of 3 percent, for total revenues in the period 2011-16 of USD 722.7 billion.

While operators in some developed markets will see slower growth or even a small decline in SMS revenues, the market researcher does not expect a uniform drop across the board. Globally, Informa forecasts that SMS traffic will total 9.4 trillion messages by 2016, up from 5.9 trillion in 2011. However, SMS’s share of global mobile messaging traffic will fall from 64.1 percent in 2011 to an estimated 42.1 percent in 2016. At the same time, mobile instant messaging traffic will increase from 1.6 trillion messages worldwide in 2011 to 7.7 trillion in 2016, doubling its share of global messaging traffic from 17.1 percent in 2011 to 34.6 percent in 2016.

While mobile IM will grow, the bulk of the revenues will still go to mobile operators. Informa forecasts that mobile operators will take USD 8.7 billion or 54 percent of total IM service revenues in 2016. Meanwhile, OTT messaging service providers’ share of IM revenues will climb over the forecast period from 37 percent in 2011 to an estimated USD 7.4 billion or 46 percent of total revenues in 2016.

Operators will also still profit from MMS and e-mail services. While MMS is expected to represent just 1.7 percent of global messaging traffic in 2016, at 387.5 billion events, MMS will represent 10.6 percent of global messaging revenues within the same timeframe, at USD 20.7 billion. E-mail will be the second revenue generator for mobile operators by 2016, generating an USD 32 billion in revenues, or 16.3 percent of total global messaging revenues, Informa estimates.

Source: by telecompaper on Tuesday 29 May 2012