Thursday, March 4, 2010

Half of Mobile VoIP Accounts will be Over the Top, 45% Supplied by Carriers in 2013

Over half of all the world's 288 million mobile VoIP users in 2013 will be using over-the-top mobile VoIP applications, about 45 percent will use mobile VoIP provided by mobile operators, according to researchers at In-Stat.

Not everybody agrees with that forecast. Disruptive Analysis in the past has argued that a majority of VoIP offers would be supplied directly by mobile operators or in partnership with third parties.

That basically illustrates the issue VoIP poses for fixed and mobile service providers. On one hand, VoIP is the future of voice. On the other hand, voice no longer will be a monopoly, high-margin revenue source for today's service providers.

That isn't to say voice is destined to become a complete "no incremental cost" application. Many providers will make some continuing revenue on voice, for quite some time.

It is just that VoIP represents a mixed blessing. It clearly is the future for voice. But the future of voice is that of an experience that sometimes does not require incremental fees, sometimes does; sometimes is bought as a service and often is used as an application.

On a geographic basis, mobile VoIP will be heavily biased towards the Asia Pacific region, particularly among the online mobile VoIP services.

“The near-term opportunity for mobile VoIP is closely linked with the growing success of dual-mode phones and other Wi-Fi connected devices,” says Frank Dickson, In-Stat analyst. “However, mobile VoIP still poses a direct threat to operator voice revenue and operators are navigating how to balance new opportunity with the threat.”

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