The messaging market will decline from $113.5 billion in 2014 to $112.9 billion in 2019, said Juniper Research.

Messaging traffic is forecast to double by 2019 — driven by OTT messaging applications such as WhatsApp and LINE — to 100 trillion by 2019 from almost 31 trillion in 2014.

The revenue generated from each OTT message is forecast be less than 1 percent of that from SMS and MMS in 2019. The telecom analysis report said OTT messaging services are facing a struggle to monetize services.

OTTs have not yet succeeded in using advertising at scale to monetize their services, due to a limited acceptance by consumers, particularly in Asian markets. Messaging services have relied upon in-app purchases such as sticker sets to generate income.

SMS still continues to dominate the market, with MNOs benefiting from growth in A2P (application to person) sector. A2P SMS will generate significant growth over the next five years, as enterprise messaging sees considerable uptake in the form of two-step verification, and notification services.

Baburajan K
[email protected]