Mobile Revenue Sources Shift to Data

Mobile data revenues are becoming a significant portion of overall service provider gross revenues, an important measure of diversification as voice continues to lose its status as revenue driver for the global mobility industry.

For a typical European operator, text messaging accounted for up to 80 percent of non-voice revenues in previous years, say researchers at Informa Telecoms & Media. But other data services are starting to show as a more-signficant revenue source. Operators such as Vodafone are seeing non-SMS services generating up to half of non-voice revenues, for example, Informa says.

Non-voice revenues totaled $157 billion in 2007, according to Informa Telecoms & Media, up from $116 billion in 2006. In the second quarter 2008 non-voice revenues surpassed $50 billion for the first time in any quarter. For 2008 as a whole they are expected to exceed $200 billion.

Revenues are heavily skewed toward emerging markets. Asia Pacific captured 39 percent of global data revenues in the second quarter, but the region is dominated by China, along with Japan and South Korea.
Europe was the second-largest region, with 25 percent of global revenues, followed by North America at 19 percent Other regions contributed just 17 percent of global revenues.

The United States, though, tops the world in mobile data average revenue per user. In the second quarter, data ARPU was $10 a month in North America, compared with a global average of just under $5.