Brazilian mobile operators have seen revenues from value-added services (VAS) grow to 31% in the first quarter of 2011, announced Acision, specialist in mobile data, in its 8th edition of MAVAM Brazil. With this growth, VAS now represents 18% of operators’ total net sales amounting to R$ 2.14 billion (US$ 1.42 billion). According to Acision, this follows a global trend in which VAS share of total operators’ revenues grows as voice revenues decline.
The study also revealed significant growth in consumption of mobile data, driven by sales of mini modems, most of them based on 3G technology, and smartphones. The Brazilian market currently has approximately 24.4 million of these devices in use. In terms of service usage, mobile broadband already represents 48% of VAS sales, followed by SMS and MMS which, combined, amounts to 41%. Net revenues from mobile broadband sales rose to 54%.
This edition of MAVAM found that Brazilian mobile broadband users accessing mobile services through their mobile phones do so mainly for personal usage – 76% of users spent 30% of their time accessing social networks. People who used mini modems to access the Internet via a computer spent 22% of their browsing time accessing e-mails and 20% each on browsing and social networks. The survey also reveals that year-on-year, there has been a widespread improvement in user satisfaction in relation to the mobile Internet browsing experience, however, the overall opinion is still poor due to the quality of connection.
Brazilian SMS usage is also growing. The survey found that Brazilians sent an average of 22 text messages every month during the year. This is equivalent to around 878 million BRL in revenue for operators, 20% up on the previous year. Based on these figures, Brazil now has a 17% share of the Latin American SMS market. However, when compared with the global SMS and MMS messaging market, which is set to reach $114.6 billion in revenue in 2011, according to research carried out by Portio Research, Latin America still lags a long way behind other regions.
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