Portio Research has released its market study, Mobile Messaging Futures 2007-2012. The report offers a complete update on the state of messaging markets worldwide, including detailed market sizing and growth forecasts for SMS and MMS by region, a thorough analysis of present market growth of Mobile Email and Mobile Instant Messaging (IM), and forecast user growth for both these upcoming services, as well as highlighting key country markets, leading vendors, and leading carriers.
The report includes detailed regional SMS growth forecasts to 2012; detailed MMS traffic and revenue forecasts, by region, to 2012; and a complete breakdown and analysis of this worldwide $80 billion (40 billion) industry.
Portio notes that the worldwide population is expected to rise from approximately 6.55 billion to approximately 7 billion between 2006 and 2012. At the same time, the company forecasts the worldwide mobile subscriber base to increase from 2.65 billion to 4.81 billion. Asian markets, which are growing at a staggering pace, are expected to account for 50% of the total worldwide subscriber base by 2008. Also, says Portio, the rise in mobile penetration in Latin America and Africa will contribute significantly towards the overall growth of the mobile market.
Although revenues from voice calls still comprise 80% of worldwide total mobile revenues, operators globally are focussing on data services for increasing their ARPU. Of the various data services available, Portio points out, while attracting none of the glamour as a leading product in most operators service portfolios, SMS actually accounts for approximately 75 80% of non-voice service revenues worldwide.
After a slow start, MMS has also started experiencing significant growth in several regions, especially in North America. Since interoperability agreements were finally put into place in 2005, the North American market has enjoyed rapid growth in MMS traffic. While North America and Europe now enjoy growing MMS traffic and revenues, MMS is still quite weak in much of Asia and other regions, namely Latin America and most of Africa and the Middle East.
Apart from SMS and MMS, Mobile Email and Mobile IM are showing strong future growth prospects in some geographic regions. Apart from North America and Europe, Mobile Email is expected to grow significantly in the mobile markets of the Asia Pacific region. The success of Mobile Email is largely driven by the growth of more advanced handheld devices, such as PDAs and Smartphones, Portio notes, so obviously growth of these services will be broadly restricted to the wealthier, more advanced markets for the immediate future.
The report takes an in-depth look at worldwide mobile messaging markets, with an aim to offer you the facts and figures to enable operators, content developers, aggregators and handset vendors to identify the key mobile messaging services of the future and the key markets where those services will flourish.
The report costs 1,495 for a 1-5 user PDF team licence; 1,995 for a small or medium-size company PDF; or 2,995 for a large corporate PDF unlimited licence.
More details, including a brochure and detailed Table Of Contents, here.