[Satellite News 04-07-11] Mobile telecom revenues are set to reach $1.1 trillion by 2015, with data services contributing 40 percent, or $440 billion, as a slowdown in voice revenues puts increased pressure on operators to maximize returns from mobile services, according to Informa Telecoms and Media research released April 7.
    The study, commissioned by mobile marketing and advertising firm Motricity, identified trends that a growing number of carriers moving to a managed service model for data offerings as a way of managing risk and shifting focus back to core businesses.
    “Risk management comes from limiting the upfront investment in infrastructure and being able to launch services more quickly. With the core competence of carriers not necessarily the development, delivery and management of services and applications, outsourcing such services can also give the operator more time to implement more directly customer-facing activities,” Informa Principal Analyst Nick Jotischky wrote in the report.
    Jotischky told Satellite News that his analysis also revealed common threads from operators. “Operators all seem to be launching new services within increasingly rapid deployment cycles while simultaneously managing tight opex margins. I called it a ‘tricky move’ in the report, but it really could be seen as a much more difficult maneuver. The situation makes the potential selection and management of a managed service supplier an even more strategic and important decision than it already is,” Jotischky said.
    The research study included a mobile provider survey, which asked respondents to identify which data services were most important to carrier revenues. A 35 percent majority said SMS messaging services are perceived as their key driver, ahead of mobile Internet at 17 percent and music at 14 percent, but when asked what would be the most important data service in two years, only 26 percent identified SMS messaging, while 29 percent of respondents saw mobile Internet as most important, followed by social networking at 28 percent.
    SMS traffic is expected to rise from 5 trillion messages in 2010 to 8.7 trillion messages in 2015 and provide a significant source of revenues and traffic for mobile operators on a global basis for at least five years. Mobile operators have invested heavily on LTE rollouts during the last year, leaving relatively little in the budget for messaging services, Informa Senior Analyst Pamela Clark-Dickson told Satellite News.
    “SMS will continue to be the most popular form of messaging for a number of reasons: universal access and interoperability across devices and mobile operator networks, ease of use, reliability and low costs, however, SMS remains a core service for mobile users and continues to account for 80 percent of their data and messaging revenues in 2010,” she said.
   Informa credits SMS’ increasing popularity in emerging markets and the delivery financial services to mobile users as the main driver for the sector’s long-term growth. Emerging markets in Africa and other regions are playing a vital role in improving the economic and social well being of mobile users and their families in these markets, Clark-Dickson said. “The fact that SMS is the universal data communications channel on the mobile device is also a huge benefit for businesses and government departments in developed markets and, more recently, for social networks like Facebook and Twitter.”