According to the latest projections from analyst firm Portio Research, global SMS revenues aren’t poised for the inevitable decline many analysts have been predicting.
SMS will continue to deliver “staggering” revenues for operators for the next few years, according to Portio Research, which insists rival analyst firms are wrong in their assumptions about revenue loss due to over-the-top (OTT) messaging.
Global SMS revenues will reach $133.8 billion in 2013, Total Telecom reported Monday. All told, SMS revenue has grown year-on-year since the early 1990s and “will remain at above 2010 levels until 2017.”
In recent years, admits Karl Whitfield, a director at Portio Research, “we have seen many reports that operators are losing $20 billion-$30 billion in SMS revenue to OTT messaging apps…We see reports that OTT traffic will be double that of SMS by the end of 2013.”
“This is wrong on both counts,” he says, although no further clarification was provided.
“SMS was levelling off before OTT apps came along, and now MNOs are gaining revenue from increased data usage instead,” Whitfield concluded. “The MNO community has not really ‘lost’ very much at all, but there is much to play for going forward.”