Mobile Voice and Messaging: Global Trends and Analyses

Mobile Voice and Messaging
Global Trends and Analyses
By ALI Saghaeian
Chief Analyst & Consultant
Telecoms, IT, and Media
Saghaeian [at] gmail.com

Objectives
• Analysis of the Growth
Curves in Mobile
• Understanding Telco Voice
Standards and the Roadmap
• Finding how cannibalization
of voice and messaging
happen
• Investigating the role of OTT
in Telco’s business revolution
• Understanding
Operators’
performance in
Voice and
Messaging
Exercise

Agenda
• Revenue Growth Curve in Mobile
• Mobile Voice Revenue Growth Curves
• Global VoLTE and VoWi-Fi Market
• Declining Voice and Messaging Trends
• Messaging Case Studies Worldwide
• OTT Messaging Traffic Worldwide

Revenue Growth Curve in Mobile
The sigmoid or the S-curve growth: This model can be used to
explain the growth of individual products, companies, markets, and
global industries.

 In a majority of the cases, the rise is slow when the subscriber
penetration is below 25% and as the subscriber penetration approaches
70-90% band in a given segment, the Net-Revenue starts to hit its peak,
stagnates for a bit and declines.
 The amount of time the revenue curve stays in the stagnation phase
depends on the market competitive dynamics and usage profile of the
subscribers in a given country.
 These are generally dependent on the maturity of the market, the
economic and political conditions of the market, the regulatory regimes,
the competitive forces that are at play in the market, and the availability
of substitute solutions.
Analysis of the Growth Curves in Mobile

Mobile Voice Revenue Growth Curves
The first cellular market started in Japan in 1979

Mobile Voice Revenue Growth Curves for some countries

Telco Voice Standards : What is our Roadmap?
VoWiFi
> Significant % of customers have poor in-building coverage in
homes, transports…
> VoWiFi can be proactively communicated to customers, e.g. T-
Mobile US & EE
> Initial launch can be without handover to mobile coverage
VoLTE
> Clear customer benefits (HD-Voice, faster call set-up,
simultaneous voice and data services at 4G speeds) that build on
existing base of HD-Voice customers
> The experience can not be inferior to that today, e.g. handover
required for launch. Therefore, no commercial launch until all major
problems have been resolved
RCS &
Enriched
Calling
> RCS & Enriched Calling, when combined with VoLTE, will ensure
that customers gets the most out of simultaneous voice, messaging
and data services; major European operators (Orange, Voda, DT &
TEF), see this as the vision for “future of comms”
> However, benefits will only be relevant to customers when there is
a significant base of enabled devices

VoLTE: Very Early Days
• 25 operators have
launched
commercially in
some capacity
across 16
countries
• VoLTE by itself is
purely a
technology
migration
• 200+ VoLTE
capable devices
announced
VoLTE is less than 2% of subscribers

VoLTE Forecast 2015 - 2020
VoLTE Subscriptions (Mio) Revenue ($ Bn)
In 2020:
• VoLTE subscription more than 1.4 Bn
• VoLTE revenue going beyond $260 Bn

VoWi-Fi Market Scenario and Forecast
VoWi-Fi is going to surpass VoLTE by 2018 in terms of minutes of use
VoWi-Fi extends the
coverage of MNOs
offering an cost-
effective, scalable, high-
quality approach
whereas cellular
coverage might be
sketchy
But VoWiFi also can help
to win the battle against
the erosion of revenue
from over-the-top
providers’ (OTTPs’) VoIP
offersSaghaeian [at] gmail.com

OTT VoIP is cannibalizing Traditional Voice Revenues

Mobile Messaging Revenue Growth Curves
The first SMS was sent in 1991 in Europe

Messaging Trends and Outlook
 In some of the emerging markets, messaging is still the second biggest
revenue generation category after voice.
 Messaging continues to be a big revenue generator but its share of the overall
data revenues is gradually declining.
 For the first time, in 2011, KPN the biggest Dutch operator started to
publicly make noise about the impact of players like Whatsapp on their
messaging revenue.
 Now, over 90% of such subscribers preferred IP messaging. Hence, they
were looking for a cheaper alternative to operator messaging.

Global SMS and MMS Traffic

Messaging in Turkey – Declining Trend

Mobile Messaging Usage Growth Curves in Spain

Mobile Messaging Revenue curve in Taiwan

SMS traffic growth slowing, MMS more volatile
• Global SMS traffic appears to have peaked at just under 8 trillion messages,
with flat growth in 2013.
• MMS traffic still appears to be somewhat volatile, peaking at 371.3 billion
messages in 2011 before falling substantially in 2012 and then recovering
somewhat in 2013. We expect that in those markets where messaging apps are
being used to send pictures, the use of MMS will continue to decline.

Variable growth in messaging traffic in top 5 markets
• China and the US are largest markets for SMS and MMS.
• But while SMS seems to be holding steady, and MMS traffic is still growing for
Chinese operators, the US operators are seeing a marked decline in both SMS
and MMS traffic.

China Mobile: steady decline in messaging revenues
• China Mobile has seen its messaging revenues steadily decline in recent years.
• Tencent‟s WeChat/Weixin incredibly popular – 396 million monthly active users ,
14/05/14

Vodafone Group: messaging traffic down
• Vodafone Group messaging traffic declined 6.6% in FY2014 to 332.6 billion
messages (356 billion in FY13)
• By country, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain and Europe saw steepest
declines: >25%
• Turkey, Romania, South Africa only opcos to see increases in messaging traffic.

OTT Messaging Traffic Worldwide

Messaging will be the most popular application /
platform in Emerging Markets for 2014-2017

Mobile Messaging Revolution

• Operators in developed markets reporting significant declines in
messaging traffic, revenues. . . . . . OTT apps increasingly favored by
subscribers, contributing to cannibalization.
• Clear segmentation is emerging among messaging apps . . . Some, like
WhatsApp, will continue to focus on communications, others (Line,
WeChat, Kakao) have already become potent content and commerce
platforms, generating good revenues
• Internet companies acquiring, investing or merging with messaging app
providers . . . Will Internet companies become the new telcos?
• Mobile operators developing multiple responses, depending on
technology and local market conditions . . . Partnership becoming very
common, especially in emerging markets; emulation has little success so
far.
• SMS becomes one of a number of communications services mobile
subscribers will use
• . . . Mobile operators have an opportunity to protect the legacy SMS
base i.e. those users who are slow/reluctant to move to IM apps.
Conclusions on Messaging

Any Questions?
10/29/2015 27
ALI Saghaeian | saghaeian@gmail.com

Mobile Voice and Messaging: Global Trends and Analyses

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais procurados

Mais procurados (20)

Destaque

Destaque (20)

Semelhante a Mobile Voice and Messaging: Global Trends and Analyses

Semelhante a Mobile Voice and Messaging: Global Trends and Analyses (20)

Mais de Ali Saghaeian

Mais de Ali Saghaeian (20)

Último

Último (7)

Mobile Voice and Messaging: Global Trends and Analyses