Every day people send billions of text messages. Wouldnt it make sense to enhance them with rich media?
As much as we love mobile content here at ME, we have to admit that when it comes to data services, messaging still rules.
In 2008 Informa said 3.5 trillion SMS messages were sent globally, generating $89 billion. And even MMS – perceived to be the sickly sibling of SMS – is expected to generate $31 billion in 2009.
Impressive numbers. But all is not rosy in messaging. Although new subscribers in emerging markets are driving overall numbers up – and commercial use of SMS keeps rising – there’s a downwards pressure on revenue-per-message-sent thanks to price competition and bundles in mature regions. To compound this, SMS finally has some competition from instant messaging within social media sites and VoIP clients.
Aram Krol, director of product marketing (messaging) at Acision, says operators are addressing this: “Yes, volumes are rising, but revenue per message isn’t. This is why operators are now looking at new markets – from enterprise messaging to ads to fixed-mobile convergence, personalisation and rich media.”
It’s in the latter area that some of the most intriguing ideas are being explored, with some innovative companies trying to breathe new life into the space. Actually, they’ve been trying for years, but only now is the market starting to pick up.
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