IM, e-mail and multimedia to drive messaging growth

Instant messaging (IM), e-mail and multimedia services are set to drive a jump in growth for mobile messaging, suggests a new report published today by telecoms consultants Analysys.

Total mobile messaging revenue is expected to peak in 2010 at €26.1 billion, up by 42 per cent on the 2005 total of €18.4 billion, according to the research.

While the volume of short message services (SMS) will continue growing steadily, revenue is likely to peak in 2008 as competition and the turn to flat-rate bundled packages drive down prices.

The report's author, Windsor Holden, said: "The danger with the flat-rate bundling of messaging services is that it both reduces the opportunity for operators to add value and exposes them to the risk of price-based competition."

The report also warned that messaging spam and the high number of multimedia messages that fail during sending could be deterrents to usage growth.

For mobile IM to reach its full potential, Holden said operators must work together and use open protocols.

"In the fixed environment, the prevalence of closed protocols means that the messaging base is primarily composed of a number of isolated communities," he said.

"If this were to be emulated in the mobile space, operators would be denying themselves any opportunity of accruing inter-network revenue and would be preventing IM from developing into a truly mass-market application."

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