Watershed year for SMS approaching

This article is talking about 2012 is the year the electronic communications opt-in vs opt-out debate is going to come to a head.

2012 is the year the electronic communications opt-in vs opt-out debate is going to come to a head, and the fallout is going to have a significant impact on both businesses and consumers.

Related telecommunication regulatory decisions are going to affect both the price of SMS, as well as the amount of SMS spam consumers receive every day – directly impacting the efficacy of the medium.

So, an important year for both SMS as a channel, particularly when used as an alert service, as well as consumers and their exposure to SMS spam.

Here then are my predictions for 2012 in more detail.

1.Opt-in vs opt-out

This debate is hotting up in the SMS market thanks to many grey routes gradually being shut down. By using grey routes, companies were able to bypass the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association’s (WASPA) opt-in requirement. These routes include both international routes and sending via newly-licensed mobile operators.

So, direct marketers operating on an opt-out basis stand to lose a lot of business if their messaging has to comply with WASPA’s opt-in requirement.

While these direct marketers are furiously lobbying WASPA to move to an opt-out framework in order to legitimise their traffic, it is no secret that I strongly advocate keeping opt-in mandatory for specifically the SMS channel.

This is for a number of reasons including that the consumer incurs a cost to opt out-of an SMS communication; allowing an opt-out framework is likely to multiply SMS spam tenfold, rendering the medium useless for general business communications as well as transactional and alert messages; and an opt-in framework is vital for WASPA to effectively identify and punish spammers.

2.P2P SMS declines, A2P messaging on the increase

Person-to-person (P2P) SMS messaging is going to continue declining in 2012, thanks to the rising popularity of mobile instant messaging platforms such as BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), WhatsApp and iMessage. But application-to-person (A2P) messaging is going to stay on its upwards trajectory and in fact become more useful as a transactional and alerting mechanism now that people’s inboxes aren’t as flooded with social SMSs.

3.An SMS interworking fee is introduced

South Africa’s telecommunications regulator ICASA is going to have to enforce an interworking fee between operators for cross-network SMS delivery in order to sort out the current muddle of anti-competitive issues.

Currently the newly-licensed entrants are taking advantage of the fact that they can terminate SMS messages for free on the networks of the incumbent operators. An internetworking fee refers to a fee paid to the network that delivers an SMS that originated on another mobile network – this has never been enforced in South Africa. This is a problem when it comes to A2P messaging, which typically is heavily asymmetrical, with very few replies generated for each message sent.

4.The cost of SMS

While mobile data prices are going to continue to fall in 2012, thanks to the ongoing price war between the South African mobile operators, the picture is not so clear-cut for SMS. For consumers, it is likely that at worst SMS prices will stay level but there is also a chance they may even drop if cross-network termination fees are introduced.

This seems counter-intuitive; however the introduction of termination fees will draw the attention of ICASA and consumers to how little SMS actually costs operators. This is likely to put more pressure on operators to reduce SMS costs for consumers.

Cross-network termination fees will also mean the cost of SMS messaging for businesses that used to use grey routes is likely to increase as the incumbent operators are unlikely to continue delivering messages for free. The cost of SMS messaging via a WASP contract is likely to decrease to match the interworking fees charged between operators.

So in summary: opt-out is a myth and an opt-in model gives WASPA the teeth it needs to regulate the industry effectively to fight spammers. But this can only happen if WASPA governs all messaging routes and there is a level playing field in terms of pricing thanks the introduction of an SMS internetworking fee between the mobile network operators.

Source from Pieter Streicher on Dec 5, 2011

Asia - Asian Mobile Ad Market on Growth Path

With the increasing rate of mobile phones adoption and penetration, it shows a positive relationship with the rate of mobile advertising. Because since everyone is holding the phone most of the time, why would marketers want to miss the golden opportunity of their ads being seen?

As the usage of smartphones, and advanced phones increase exponentially in the Asian markets, the growth scope for mobile advertisements is also on the rise. According to a recent Mobile Insights Report – Asia Regional Summary, released by InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile ad network, the Asian mobile ad market grew by 25% to over 69.5 billion quarterly ad impressions in Q3 2011. The period taken is July to September 2011.

Talking about the market statistics Atul Satija, Vice President and Managing Director – Asia Pacific at InMobi, says “Asia continues to be an important growth market for InMobi. With increasing penetration of Android devices and cheaper data plans being seen across the region, we see significant growth of deeply immersive brand advertising on the mobile platform over the next year. What will also be interesting to see is a stronger application development ecosystem led by local app economies that are already emerging in Taiwan and Singapore, and will soon become prominent in markets like Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, among others.”

According to InMobi India is currently the number one mobile ad market with a high 47% market share. It is followed by Indonesia with 18.8% share, and Vietnam at 6.6% share. Surprisingly Japan and China which have a very high mobile phone usage are low in ranking in terms of mobile ad popularity. Japan has only 6.4% market, and China has 3.2% market.

The study further shows that the ad growth is driven more by smartphones than advanced phones. In terms of mobile OS, Android gained market share while other OSes experienced a decline, iPhone OS (-2.7%), Nokia OS (-2.2%) and Symbian OS (-1.1%). Android impressions grew by 7.5 share points in Q3 2011.

Satija also points out that with increased smartphone adoption; app impressions are expected to continue growing exponentially in the region. While Nokia impressions declined slightly this quarter, its devices still make up almost half the mobile ad impressions in Asia. The other vendors who make the top five list include Samsung with 20.6%, Sony Ericsson with 8.1%, Apple with 6.3% and HTC with 3%. Although Apple’s total share declined slightly, the iPhone 4 delivered the most impressions in the region with a 3.3% market share.

Source: By Staff Writer on 29th November 2011.

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China - China Mobile says total subscribers rose to 638.89 million in October

China is a big potential market, having the first ranking for the population. Imagine how big is the market in China?

China Mobile Ltd, China's largest mobile carrier, said on Monday that its total mobile subscribers increased to 638.89 million in October, including 45.33 million 3G subscribers.

China Mobile said on its website that 3G subscribers rose by 2.17 million in October, while total users increased by 5.37 million.

Source: Reporting by Christina Lo; Editing by Chris Lewis on 21st November 2011.

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