Philippines Gmessage a Test of Carrier Instant Messaging Success

Globe Telecom, the second biggest carrier in the Philippines, is about to find out how important network effects are for instant messaging users. 

Globe Telecom is launching its own instant messaging service, with one key attribute: messages can be sent to people who do not use Gmessage. The new service has tough competition, including Facebook and Whatsapp, for example.


At least in part, Globe Telecom is responding to declining text messaging usage, and growing use of instant messaging platforms as an alternative. 

Instant messaging is quite popular in Asia. But the markets remain fragmented.  In China, the top instant messaging applications are Imo.im and Chatroulette. Imo.im reaches 3.7 percent of the users with 6.5 percent of all page views and Chatroulette reaches 1.7 percent of the users with 1.3 percent of all page views.

Line, which has grown to 60 million users, mostly in Asia including at least 29 million in Japan.

Also popular is Kakao Talk with 60 million users, more than half in South Korea where it originates. 

Other messenging apps include Nimbuzz, which has amassed 100 million users including 31 million in Asia, and WeChat by China-based Tencent, which is nearing 200 million users.



Globe’s Gmessage is potentially significant for a few reasons. Number one is that mobile messaging services are popular in Asia, and that is hurting text messaging revenue. 

In South Korea, KakaoTalk has more than 60 million users, and LINE is enjoying similar popularity in Japan. In China, Weixin – or WeChat, in English – has more than 200 million users. 

Alongside WhatsApp, all three are intent on expanding in the Southeast Asian markets. So Globe Telecom is fighting back with an offer of its own. 

U.S., Canada are Least Concentrated Broadband Markets

Many observers complain about the dominance of cable companies and telcos in the fixed network high-speed access market, but a new analysis by Ofcom, the United Kingdom communications regulator, suggest the United States and Canada have the least concentrated markets among 13 examined by Ofcom.

When the combined retail customer market share of the three largest broadband providers in each country is used as a measure of market concentration, and across the 13 countries for which figures are available, the average share of the largest three providers increased from 64.1 percent to 65.2 percent in 2011.

In the five years to 2011 the change in the combined connection share of the three largest providers in each country ranged from a 20.9 percentage point fall in Poland to a 16.2 percentage point increase in Ireland.

The most concentrated broadband market at the end of 2011 was France (where the largest providers (Orange, Free and SFR/Neuf) accounted for 86 percent of connections), followed by Ireland at 85 percent.

Excluding the United States and Canada (where infrastructure-based competition between local incumbent telecoms providers and cable operators makes the share of the largest three operators a less useful measure of competition) the least concentrated broadband market among our comparator countries was in Poland, where the three largest providers’ combined market share was 57 percent.

That structural difference between North American fixed broadband markets, and those of most other countries, where only a single broadband network exists, also suggests why the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is less concerned than regulators elsewhere about mandatory wholesale access obligations and prices.

While it is far from perfect, robust competition between cable operators and telcos provides a workable level of competition without mandatory access obligations and price control.

The other structural consideration is that, in the continental-sized U.S. market, for example, service providers in both cable and telco industries are prevented from becoming too large. Roughly speaking, no single service provider is allowed to gain more than about 30 percent of total market share.

That necessarily means a larger number of significant providers, on a national level. Still, the Ofcom analysis is significant. Using informal tests of market concentration across more than a dozen nations, the U.S. and Canadian markets are the least concentrated.

Demand and Supply are Issues for 1-Gbps Internet Access

It is easy to criticize big Internet access providers for arguing there is little to no demand for symmetrical 1-Gbps high-speed access services of the type Google Fiber is providing in Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Kan. It comes off as an attempt to downplay the significance of a competitor's offering.

At least in part, such statements often are "jawboning" efforts to shape opinion. But there are other legitimate aspects as well. Consumers in some markets who can buy 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps or faster services, often have shown they are willing to buy slower-speed services. 

The other practical problem is that the rest of the Internet is not yet optimized for 1-Gbps speeds. Consider a recent test of Internet service provider access speeds for Netflix video streams. 

Without question, Google Fiber was the most consistently fast ISP in America for watching Netflix streamed content, according to Netflix. 

But keep it in perspective: Netflix streaming only happens so fast, on a 1-Gbps or much slower connections. In other words, a few consumers might want 1-Gbps like they want other products: for "bragging rights." 

In practice, a faster access pipe will always be bound by all the other access pipes, servers and backbone transit routes and equipment in between any two connections. Upgrading just one link doesn't actually provide that much value. It simply shifts the bottleneck elsewhere.

63% of Mobile Video Consumption Happens at Home

Fully 63 percent of digital video screening on mobile phones does not happen on-the-go, but rather at home, a study conducted on behalf of  the  Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has found. 

Some 36 percent of these home-based digital video activities happen in a room where a second screen also is present (television, PC or tablet), IAB says. 

This is perhaps the inkling of a future shift in the mobile video medium. 

Initially, the thinking was that people would watch bits of video in "interstitial" time, between other activities, or while waiting at a bus stop, for example. Also, the general thinking was that people would naturally want to use the biggest available screen.

The IAB findings tend to refute the notion that mobile video is something consumers use haphazardly,  at odd times of the day, when they have nothing else going on and no other screen available. 

That might suggest users have a preference for the mobile experience even when they are stationary and have other screens available, and that a distinct "fourth screen experience" is developing, with potential attributes different from television, PC and tablet video consumption. In fact, use of a phone to watch video when other screens readily are available suggests there is something about mobile viewing that users see as "better" than viewing on a larger screen, for whatever reason.


Mobile video usage also appears to taking on some of the patterns of traditional television consumption, with a "prime time" period in the evening.  About 22 percent of video interactions were purposefully planned, while 18 percent of views were "because I was bored" motivations, and only three percent of mobile viewing happened because no other screen was available.

On the other hand, the study also shows that short form content remains the driver for mobile viewing.  The most-frequently-viewed genres in mobile video included music videos (45 percent), movie trailers (42 percent), tutorials/How-To's (41 percent) and funny short video clips (37 percent).

Humorous short clips (66 percent) and music videos (52 percent) are the most likely to be shared. And it is that sharing that is shaping up as a distinctive feature of the mobile video experience.

The findings continue to suggest that short form content is best suited to mobile consumption, or at least that is what consumers choose to do, at the moment. Where people are watching (at home), what they are watching (short form content), when they are watching (prime time) and why they are not using a larger screen are relevant observations. 

It remains possible that many mobile viewers do not use a larger screen, even when it is available, for some technology reason (TV doesn't have Internet connection), because others are using the other screens at the moment or simply because they prefer the mobile experience. 

Nor does the study shed much light on a related, but different issue, namely whether users would choose to view long-form content on a mobile screen when other screens are available, and whether the type of content to be viewed makes a difference. In other words, it is conceivable a single person watching news would choose to view on a tablet, but that same person might prefer to watch a high-definition movie on the biggest screen, especially when it is a shared experience. 

The IAB study does not address those other questions. 

Consumer "Media" Preferences are Shifting

If, over the last four years, consumers have consistently spent less time with television, radio and print media, while steadily spending more time consuming media on mobile devices, what would that tell you?

True, we haven't yet seen significant shifts in revenue for video entertainment services, and one might argue that advertising revenues related to media consumption have not yet budged much, either. 

But, sooner or later, advertising follows audience attention. 

Mobile Broadband Became Majority of Access in G-20 Countries in 5 Years

It sometimes is hard to comprehend just how fast trends related to the Internet can change. 

Consider that, in the G-20 countries, mobile broadband went from negligible to a majority of all access connections in just five years, between 2005 and 2010. 

In five more years, in 2015, mobile G-20 Internet connections will be about 80 percent of all connecttions, Business Insider estimates.

Middle Class Will Explode Globally, So Will Use of Broadband Internet

Middle classes most everywhere in the developing world are poised to expand substantially in terms of both absolute numbers and the percentage of the population that can claim middle class status during the next 15-20 years, according to the National Intelligence Council. 

That has huge implications for providers of communication services, especially Internet-related applications and services. India, China and the rest of Asia provide examples, as those regions will far outstrip the share of middle class consumption in the United States, Japan and European Union, for example. 

At the same time, the United States, European, and Japanese share of global income is projected to fall from 56 percent today to well under half by 2030.

Note the dramatic increase in economic growth the Council expects will happen between now and 2030. It took Britain 155 years to double gross domestic product per capita, The United States and Germany took between 30 and 60 years to do so.

India and China are doing this at a scale and pace  not seen before: 100 times the people than Britain and yet a doubling of GDP in one tenth the time. By 2030 Asia will be well on its way to returning to being the world’s powerhouse, just as it was before 1500, NIC analysts say.

Sub-Saharan Africa, rural India, and other traditionally isolated regions are being globally connected. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly rich sensor platforms, enabling nearly all communication mediated by technology to be tracked and analyzed at a fine level of detail.

More than 70 percent of the world’s population already has at least one mobile device; global mobile data traffic in 2010 was three times the size of the entire Internet in 2000.

By 2015, in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, more people will have mobile network access than with electricity at home.

As much as it has been a "problem" figuring how to ensure that billions of humans who "never have made a phone call" is a problem we have largely solved, the next challenge is assuring that those billions of people who do not presently use the Internet can do so.

The amount of change we will see will be breathtaking.