Some Scary Mobile Product Life Cycles

It might not have been obvious that voice is a product with a life cycle. It might not have been obvious that text messaging likewise is a product with a life cycle. 

But they are. And if they are, it means they eventually will decline, as revenue sources for communications providers. 

More surprising is the observation that even in many developing markets, such as India, China and Indonesia, voice and messaging is not that far from an adoption peak. 

The issue is the magnitude of revenue that mobile service providers will have to generate to replace dwindling voice and messaging revenues, though the magnitude of the revenue issues is more significant for the voice product than the messaging product. 

Voice represents something on the order of 72 percent percent of total mobile service provider revenue, according to ABI Research estimates. 

Messaging represents about 21 percent of total revenue, so declining messaging revenue is less a problem than lost voice revenue. Mobile Internet revenue still is growing, in every market, so there is more time to react to the eventual maturation of that market, which at the moment only represents about six percent of total mobile service provider revenue globally, by ABI Research estimates. 

ABI Research also forecasts annual mobile voice revenues to reach $580 billion in 2010. 

From 2011 on, rising subscriber saturation will increasingly erode mobile voice revenues, not just in developed markets but also in a number of emerging markets. By 2014, mobile voice revenues will have contracted by 9.6 percent.

While mobile operators have received a substantial boost from value-added services such as messaging and mobile Internet, competition is squeezing margins for a variety of services and carriers. Total mobile data services should generate $169 million in 2009 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate of nine percent until 2014. 

By the end of 2009 the declines in annual average revenue per user (ARPU) will have been felt most severely in Asia-Pacific (-8.7% to $105) and Africa (-7.8% to $134). ARPU in 2009 in North America will have contracted, but only by -0.6% to $526).

Mobile Internet revenue ($52) will help to prop up overall service revenue for the region. 

The issue is that mobile service providers in developed regions now have to rely on mobile broadband and data plans to replace lost voice and messaging revenue. But even service providers in developing nations will have to do the same, at some point. 

The immediate issue is whether mobile broadband and data plans can cover most of the voice and messaging shortfall, or whether other revenue sources will have to be found. 

Any way you look at it, mobile service provider voice and data services now are mature products set to decline. Altogether, voice and data represent 82 percent of all revenues. 

Those are very big numbers in a global market that represents $800 billion worth of revenue. Replacing half that revenue, a reasonable assumption over a 10-year period, means finding $400 billion in new revenues. 

Those are big numbers. Ironically, matters are worse for service providers who have done a better job growing mobile data revenues. The U.S. mobile data market repersents $19.3 billion worth of revenue in the second quarter of 2012 and now represents almost 42 percent of U.S. mobile industry service revenues, Sharma says.