On Friday, Portio Research published the 6th edition of ‘Mobile Messaging Futures’ which boldly predicts MMS to be a cash machine over the next four years.
According to Portio, MMS – launched after the initial success of SMS to deliver multimedia content – has until recently been the second greatest revenue generating non-voice service, after SMS.
Last year, roughly $31 billion of the worldwide mobile messaging market’s $202 billion came from MMS.
Such a demonstrable pedigree over the years has made it all the more baffling as to why such a valuable service never shook the industry misconception that it was a failure.
“With the dawn of more advanced technologies like 3G and accelerating smartphone penetration, MMS growth has now started showing signs of slowing down,” says John White of Portio Research. “Amongst various benefits of faster Internet speeds, the combination of smartphones and 3G has extended the novel idea of multimedia file sharing with appropriate simplicity.”
Portio’s forecasts show that MMS will generate revenues of $183.2 billion over the years 2012-2016.
“That is still a very sizable chunk of cash,” White says, “so let’s not write MMS off yet.”
