AT&T and Verizon are the top dogs in mobile data revenue.
In accordance with the latest industry information presented by Chetan Sharma Consulting, the US mobile data market grew 6% quarter over quarter and 21% year over year to reach $18.7 billion in Q1 2012.
Incredibly, data is now over 40% of the US mobile industry service revenue. For the year 2012, for example, Chetan Sharma is forecasting that mobile data revenues in the US market will reach $80 billion.
Not surprisingly, the two biggest carriers in the United States – Verizon and AT&T – are also the most dominant players in the domestic mobile market, These two carriers alone represent two-thirds of all US mobile subscribers and they take in a combined 68 percent of all mobile data services revenues.
“We are at a critical juncture of the industry evolution,” the report from Sharma reads. “The OTT phenomenon is shifting the tectonic plates at a rapid pace. What seemed like a minor irritant only a few quarters back is become a nuisance virus that is eating away the core. Some operators have gone into panic mode while others have stepped back, assessed the situation, embraced it, and will try to exploit the opportunity… However, while the world waits for interop and wide availability, startups can offer similar and, in most cases, better services now. They can iterate rapidly and reach scale at much faster pace. We are in software-defined world after all.”
