The number of mobile IM (Instant Messaging) users will exceed 1.3bn by 2016, triple the number of users in 2010, according to a new report, Mobile Messaging Markets, from Juniper Research. Growth will be driven both by the arrival of new services, such as Apples iMessage, and the continued growth of existing services, such as AOLs AIM, Blackberry Messenger, Microsofts Windows Live, Skype and Yahoo! Messenger.
The report notes that the launch of these free Mobile IM services has been facilitated by the increasing number of smartphones in use, low-cost data packages, and the development of high-speed mobile networks. While some IM services are ad-funded, most are viewed by the operators as customer retention tools, with the only cost to the user being the data usage charged.
The report finds, however, that while users of these services will grow, they will not challenge SMS as the primary means of text communication on mobile handsets.
“SMS has one distinct advantage over over-the-top services: its ubiquity,” says report author, Daniel Ashdown. “With an SMS, I know I can reach almost any handset in the world, if I have its number. While IM services have some advantages, such as real-time communication and apparent absence of cost, the market is fragmented by different services which cannot communicate with each other.” 
Within the SMS market, revenue from Application-to-Person (A2P) SMS will exceed $70bn (£43bn) by 2016, overtaking Person-to-Person (P2P) during that year. A2P messaging – defined as those messages which are sent to or from an application – has a wide variety of use-cases, including financial services, ticketing, and any other service involving sending or receiving a large number of messages.
The report also finds that Premium-rate SMS and MMS will decline due to challenges from other forms of billing/delivery. MMS traffic and revenue will continue to grow, but A2P MMS will not have as big an impact as A2P SMS. And mobile email adoption will continue, as the number of handsets with QWERTY keyboards, internet access and larger screens increase.
There’s more information about the report here.
