Some Mobile Service Providers Will Face More Challenges in Voice, Text, Than Others

What is true of global aggregate performance in the telecom business might not be so true for discrete service providers in specific markets. So it appears that prospects for voice and messaging revenue might be robust in some markets, even if that is not the case in other regions, or for the global market as a whole, an analysis by Infonetics Research might suggest.

Despite the popularity of over-the-top messaging applications like Apple’s iMessage and WhatsApp, Infonetics Research predicts that text messaging (short message service, or SMS) revenue will  grow, on  a global basis, every year from 2012 to 2016, delivering a cumulative $1 trillion in operator revenue during those five years.

Over that same period, voice revenue will decline slightly,, Infonetics Research predicts. Voice revenue dipped 0.8 percent worldwide in 2011, despite the growing use of voice services in China, for example.

On a global basis, Infonetics expects mobile service providers will see a six-percent increase overall in revenue from mobile voice, mobile broadband, and mobile messaging services in 2012. The issue is the specific contribution from each of those services, in each country and market.

The highest growth in 2012 will come from Asia Pacific and Latin America regions, while the Europe, Middle East and Africa  region is expected to see a slight decline.

Globally, the mobile services market is forecast to grow to $976 billion by 2016, with the bulk of the growth coming from mobile broadband services, as you might expect.

Mobile data (text messaging, multimedia messaging, and mobile broadband) service revenue rose in every region in 2011, driven by an increase in smart phone usage, though the specific contributions made by messaging and mobile broadband are important.

Mobile broadband subscribers will grow from 15 percent to nearly 40 percent of all mobile subscribers between 2011 and 2016, Infonetics Research  suggests.