Mobile & Wireless

SMS continues to rule worldwide

Mobile messaging industry commands US$130B in revenues this year

by Samantha Bookman

A report by Portio Research shows that mobile messaging industry revenues for 2008 came in at more than US$130 billion and predicts that amount to grow to US$224 billion by 2013.

SMS (short message service) is such a ubiquitous technology — it works across all phones and all networks, and is cheap and easy to use — that very little will stop its growth, says the report, "Mobile Messaging Futures 2008 - 2013." Other mobile messaging services, such as MMS (multimedia messaging service), mobile e-mail, and mobile IM, will also help drive growth.

Mobile messaging was a slow starter in the U.S. market, but has taken off like a bullet in recent years -- SMS use per subscriber per month is now almost double the European average. Yet the Phillippines reigns supreme in SMS usage, with subscribers averaging 755 messages per month.

Mobile e-mail use still lags behind SMS in every country but Japan, but Portio predicts the number of users will quadruple in the next five years, from 250 million currently to a billion by 2013.

Meantime, MMS is steadily gaining ground; the report predicts this technology will achieve revenues of US$30 billion next year thanks to fast growth in China and the U.S.

Struggling to keep pace at the moment is MIM (Mobile Instant Messaging). Interoperability problems still plague this newer technology but its popularity in the youth segment makes it a strong candidate for exponential growth. The report predicts that MIM usage will surge from its current worldwide total of 111 million users to 867 million users by the end of 2013.

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