January 18, 2009
Text Messaging Still King of Mobile Data Revenues Worldwide
Far from reaching a peak and tailing off, Worldwide Messaging Revenues are set to almost double by 2013 according to a new report from Portio Research focused on mobile messaging that suggests that SMS will continue to be the cash cow of mobile data revenues for some time to come. 160characters reports.
More than fifteen years have passed since the world witnessed its first SMS and in spite of many predictions to the contrary, traffic volumes and revenues continue to confound predictions and are expected to keep growing throughout the global economic downturn.
Indeed the whole mobile messaging industry worth USD 130 billion in 2008 is predicted to be worth USD 224 billion by 2013, 60 percent of non-voice service revenues.
The report, ‘Mobile Messaging Futures 2008 – 2013’ ventures that there is nothing likely to stop continued growth of mobile messaging in the short term, driven by a cocktail of ubiquitous SMS, media rich MMS, enterprise based mobile email and youth conscious mobile IM.
SMS remains ‘King’ because there is no cheap, easy to use alternative that will work with all phones and across all networks, it is loved the world over. Indeed in the US market, where SMS was a comparative slow starter, use per subscriber per month is now almost double the European average. However in China average users send over 100 messages each month whereas the Filipinos continue to be the leading exponents with 755 messages each month. Compared to Asia Pacific’s 40 percent, Latin America and Africa and Middle East contributed a mere 3.9 percent and 4.3 percent respectively to worldwide mobile messaging revenues in 2007.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2009/01/022387.htm