In India, where ARPU from voice is going down, mobile message revenue will be the salvation for telecom service providers.

 

 

 

 

The growth of messaging traffic will assist service providers to increase their revenue.

 

 

 

 

 

Messaging popularity has continued to grow every year with more innovative, creative and potential ways. After 3G has rolled out in India, multimedia messages have become common amongst youngsters. There has been rapid adoption of smart phones in India.

 

 

 

 

There is lot of scope for service providers to capitalize on messaging as mobile phones have become ubiquitous. India consumes 12-15 million mobile handsets every month.

 

 

Since service providers have lot of scope to capitalize on messaging, current scenario and forecasts are requisite to know.

 

 

 

 

India has scope to capitalize as mobile messaging revenue has grown to $1465 million in 2011 from $783 million in 2009, according to Ovum. The revenue is expected to be $2,504 million by 2016.

 

 

 

 

According to TRAI data, on an average every Indian sends 29 SMSs per month. Messages have gained its popularity through news updates, astrology, jokes, tips, alerts etc. It is also a significant source of revenue for service providers as VAS contributes around 10-15 percent of the total revenue.

 

 

 

 

After the introduction of 3G and LTE social media networks like Facebook has stepped into mobile messaging application.

 

 

 

 

Messaging has become integral part of mobile phone usage and has become effective and affordable way of reach and also increases service provider’s revenue.

 

 

 

 

Normal text messaging traffic of which A2P/P2A was 5,522 million in 2009. This will go up from 26,021 million in in 2011 to 97,756 million in 2016, according to Ovum.

 

 

 

 

 

3G and smart phones enabled users to send a number of video and picture messages.The picture messaging traffic was 939 million in 2009, which increased to 2,819 million in 2011 and expected to reach 4,414 million by 2016. Moreover, in 2009 video messaging traffic was 94 million, is now 282 million in 2011 and expected to be 474 million by 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

Roll out of 3G and LTE will have a positive impact on mobile messaging revenue in emerging telecom markets such as India, the Middle East & Africa, China and Brazil. But it will depend on country and operator activities.

 

By Rashi Varshney
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