The one thing that has changed in the mobile landscape is
the increased use of Smartphone around the globe. Though the overall mobilephone market suffered during 2011-2012, the Smartphone market grew 42.5% Year-Over-Year, from Q1-2011and Q1-2012. Thanks to the increased competition (making these phones
affordable as well) and increased usability of these devices, the trend doesn’t seem to
slow down. An obvious change in Smartphones as comparison to feature/dumb phones is the possibility to use apps for various purposes including
that of messaging and voice services (voice-over-ip). So, the question is, will this
eventually lead to shrinking SMS revenues for telcos?
Are users texting SMS lesser than before? Well, it seems so; at least the trend is in that direction. The increased use of
social media, FB, Twitter etc., in Smartphone is increasing rapidly. People
share more "junk/spam" via these apps than SMS or email. For e.g. for
most "sharing" of info people use these media instead of SMS. SMS is
more for sensible texting than sharing of information. The over-the-top apps
are increasingly becoming popular as well even for "sensible" messaging.
For e.g. Sarita (my wife) and I normally text via whatsapp. It’s simple to use
and we don’t pay anything to anyone for using it as we mostly use these
services in a wifi/WLAN environment. In fact, Financial Times recently reported a trend in this direction warning operators to find new ways of profit from data provision.
Long way for a catch up though: On the other hand, SMS continues to enjoy
mass usage in the near-term. Statistically, SMS usage is today about 4.2B+ while Smartphone usage is yet to hit
the billion mark. Many of the services across the world are based on SMS messaging as well. Moreover, the
developing nations are yet to catch up on the use of apps (and Smartphones), which continues to make SMS a
revenue making option for operators near term.
While I predict a long term decline in SMS usage (and hence
revenues for operators via SMS), I believe SMS will continue being a revenue
making machine for operators near-term. Surely, KPIs focussing on revenues-per-SMS etc will soon become obsolete and move more towards provisioning of data. What are your thoughts?
Posts
