OTT App Traffic Now Higher than Text Messaging

Over the top messaging now is costing mobile service providers in Spain about €341 million annually.  Text messaging revenues in Spain have declined from €1.1 billion (US$1.4 billion) in 2007 to €758.5 million in 2011 (US$991.8 million), says  Pamela Clark-Dickson, Informa Telecoms analyst. 

Significant losses also have occurred in other markets such as the Netherlands and South Korea. 

Region		P2P Messaging Traffic (In Billion)
		2010	2011	2012	2013F	2014F	2015F	2016F	2017F
Worldwide	P2P SMS	5,812	6,546	6,623	6,687	6,654	6,522	6,304	5,931
	OTT Messaging	1,494	3,840	6,774	10,452	14,970	20,437	26,359	32,141

 source:Portio Research

Daily OTT messaging traffic has already overtaken daily P2P SMS traffic in terms of volume, with an average of 19.1 billion OTT messages sent per day in 2012, compared with an average of 17.6 billion person-to-person SMS messages.

By the end of 2013, Informa estimates that 41 billion OTT messages will be sent every day, compared with an average of 19.5 billion P2P SMS messages. 

Still, text messaging users vastly outnumber users of OTT apps. There were about 3.5 billion SMS users in 2012, compared with about 586.3 million users of OTT messaging. 

Each OTT user sent an average of 32.6 OTT messages a day, compared with just five SMS messages per day per P2P SMS user, meaning that OTT-messaging users are sending more than six times as many messages as P2P SMS users do, says Clark-Dickson. 

Still, Informa forecasts that global SMS revenues and traffic will continue to increase through 2016. Other analysts likewise predict the overall percentage of OTT messaging will continue to grow, compared to text messaging. Free is an attractive price point.