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Submitted by Mike Grenville on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:45 |
A study conducted for Airwide into future messaging trends found that SMS is primed for the next explosive growth.
The study -- which was conducted by the independent analyst house, Direct2Mobile on behalf of Airwide Solutions -- found that mobile operators believe SMS will become the enabler that underpins next generation advanced services. All operators surveyed (100 percent) claimed that they are seeking to use the investment they have made in developing their mobile messaging infrastructure in order to introduce value-added services such as mobile social networking, mobile applications, mobile broadband, IM- and presence-based services and the mobile Internet. Of all the services cited, mobile social networking and mobile applications lead the way with 75 percent of mobile operators expecting to invest in them over the next 12 months. Mobile broadband is not far behind with 65 percent of operators expecting to make investments over the next 12 months, closely followed by location-based services, IM/presence based services and the mobile Internet (which 50 percent of operators stated would be a priority for the 12 months ahead).
Social Networking Potential
According to Airwide's research, social networking is seen by most operators as the key driver of both person to person (P2P) and application to person (A2P) consumer messaging volumes. Operators are keen to capitalize on the success of social networking and ensure that SMS is the primary conduit for swapping messages and delivering status updates on both mobile and fixed-Internet social networking sites. Indeed, consumers are already becoming accustomed to making status updates to various social networking sites via SMS, as well as via their WAP browser on the mobile Internet. It is the speed, ubiquity, convenience and value-for-money of this approach that is compelling to the consumer market. Moreover, as operators enable social networking sites to automatically deliver updates via SMS, A2P messaging volumes are set to rapidly increase.
According to Airwide's survey, mobile broadband and location based services will also play a key role in future operator strategies with 50 percent of operators expecting mobile broadband will play a very important role in expanding the messaging market and 50 percent and 37.5 percent of operators expecting location-based services to play a "very important" and "somewhat important" role, respectively.
Enterprising Message
Interestingly, the enterprise messaging market is also set to expand with 75 percent of operators expecting enterprise/brands to play an important role in market growth. As corporates, brands, banks and utilities increasingly evolve their brand awareness campaigns to offer a direct connection with consumers, it will be the operators' infrastructure to which they turn to make these campaigns possible. Transportation organizations, for example may want to update their customers directly on travel conditions in real time without having to rely on SatNav or WAP browsing. Similarly, banks will want to offer information via SMS on account balances and unusual transactions. However, for such campaigns to be successful, the mobile operators' infrastructure will need to be reliable enough to deliver the better than 99.999 percent -- "five nines" reliability which is critical for growth. In the provision of business critical information, the potential loss of messages has until now held back the sector from embracing mobile messaging as a communications medium.
For enterprises, high performance messaging is crucial and Airwide Solutions helps mobile operators to meet this need through the company's unique tiered architectural approach which offers high performance and cost efficiency for multiple messaging types. Airwide's AirMessenger Router offers First Delivery Attempt (FDA), load distribution and routing intelligence so that traffic can be dynamically allocated across the network's messaging elements in the most efficient manner.
Forgotten Cash Cow
The study wonders if amid the hype surrounding advanced data services, SMS has become the forgotten cash cow for the mobile industry.
In 2008 revenue from messaging was US$108 billion, 97% of which was from SMS according to Informa. While P2P messaging is predicted by Informa to generate more than US$130 billion in global revenues by 2013, the total revenue for non-voice data services such as games, TV and LBS will be less than half this figure (excluding internet data browing charges).
Jay Seaton, CMO at Airwide Solutions, commented: "Revenues from SMS have become a substantial and strategic income stream for mobile operators worldwide. However, recent market changes are placing an ever greater pressure on operators to deliver new and richer services that will not only complement voice and text services but also boost ARPU and help improve market share. As operators look to introduce next generation value added services, companies such as Airwide Solutions are perfectly positioned to not only provide operators with the highly reliable infrastructure they need to support the roll out of these services, but also the flexible foundation to enable operators to react to ever-changing service demands of subscribers. This is an opportunity for fast moving operators to be on the forefront of this trend and offer subscribers the enhanced services they desire."
Nick Lane, Chief Researcher, Direct2Mobile, added: "The research shows mobile operators are now looking to increase their margins associated with messaging by introducing premium based SMS services or pushing SMS users higher up the value chain onto MMS, and valueadded services. Mobile operators can use their infrastructure as an enabler to these new services while also protecting subscribers from possible security risks."
Despite being regularly predicted by analysts of having reached its peak, even mature markets are still experiencing substantial growth - even 30% in the UK. "The time of messaging has come" said Seaton, "and we can now move beyond examples".
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