Saturday, March 2, 2024

How Big is the Telco API Opportunity?

According to Ericsson, connectivity service providers have the opportunity to capitalize on the expansion of the communication platform as a service market--essentially voice or messaging enabling any other apps--by using application programming interfaces.


In part, that is an effort to reclaim some revenues being earned by other third-party providers of such capabilities, such as Twilio. Twilio makes money by providing a suite of APIs  that allow developers to integrate various communication channels (voice, SMS, video, email) into their applications.


The revenue model then typically is based on usage fees: Developers are charged based on their usage of these APIs, including per-minute voice calls, per-message sent, for example. 


The opportunity for connectivity service providers might be as high as $94 billion in annual revenue by about 2030, a target large enough to be interesting for mobile operators. 


Platform

Study Name

Date of Forecast

Publishing Venue

Revenue Forecast (Billions USD)

Twilio

Twilio Investor Relations

February 2024

Company Website

$5.84 in 2023, expected to reach $14.3 by 2026

Vonage

Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, Worldwide

February 2024

Gartner Report

$2.23 in 2023, projected to grow at 8.8% CAGR to reach $3.48 by 2028

Plivo

Plivo Blog: The State of Communications APIs in 2024

February 2024

Company Blog

$400 million in 2023, expected to reach $1.2 billion by 2027

Sinch

Sinch Annual Report 2023

February 2024

Company Website

€510 million in 2023, anticipated to reach €1.2 billion by 2026

Bandwidth

Market Research Future: Unified Communications as a Service Market 2023-2030

February 2024

Market Research Report

$26.71 billion in 2023, predicted to grow at 22.7% CAGR to reach $93.62 billion by 2030 (This includes all UCaaS providers, not just Bandwidth)


Though a controversial move at the time, the acquisition aimed to leverage Vonage's CPaaS offering based on Application Programming Interfaces to expose network capabilities. 


Ericsson aimed to leverage APIs originally for enterprise use cases, but now also seemingly is embraced by some mobile operators as a way of creating new revenue streams based on voice- or text- or “other network features” enhancing apps. 


Vonage's large developer community also was viewed as a value. 


The larger point is that mobile operators might now view CPaaS as a reasonably attractive revenue growth opportunity, even if all that happens is that market share is taken from other providers.


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