Editor’s Note: RCR Wireless News asked wireless industry analysts and executives to provide their predictions for what they expect to see in 2012 across their areas of expertise.
2011 was another year of diversity for the mobile industry. With a raft of new smart devices, tablets, applications, services and new pricing plans, consumers and enterprises alike have had more choice than ever when making use of the mobile device.
So what will 2012 hold?
Litmus test for new messaging services
Acision believes that the coming year will be the “litmus test” for over-the-top messaging services, all battling to compete in a fragmented market. However, global text messaging volumes are expected to continue to grow next year, from the 4.2 billion SMS users today to over 5 billion users and 8 trillion messages. This growth will be driven by new innovations in trusted messaging applications, personalized messaging and rich communication services. While 2011 saw many new players emerge on the messaging scene – including Apple’s iMessage, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp – SMS will still be king! One major reason: in the very fragmented messaging market, SMS is the only ubiquitous channel working across any brand, network and device type, even without 3G.
However, will these new messaging services truly challenge the ubiquity and reliability of SMS when more than 80% of mobile users already use SMS on their phones and over-the-top service can only reach the those with mobile broadband that have downloaded a messaging app?
The rise of RCS-e
RCS-e and IP Messaging services are expected to be a priority for operators in 2012, as they seek to deliver new innovative services to compete with OTT messaging services. RCS-e is a key to delivering services that have the same user experience, reach and reliability that users have become accustomed to with SMS, while leveraging the capabilities of broadband IP network.
RCS-e and IP Messaging will enable operators to support the core messaging services by delivering SMS alongside other messaging solutions such as IM, group chat, file transfer and video sharing, as well as a store and forward functionality in the event that the destination device is off-line.
Greater messaging innovation
Acision believes that 2012 will be the year that SMS evolves beyond the services we know today, providing a platform for enriched personalised messaging services, such as group messaging, auto-reply/auto-signature and parental control. These services have the potential to increase messaging revenues by up to 15% and vastly improve the messaging experience and relevance for the end-user. In addition, we expect to see widespread adoption of services like collect SMS and prepaid SMS reply services, which modelled on the well known collect call procedure and enables prepaid customers to send messages even when out of credit.
Portio Research recently released a report highlighting the future exponential growth of the worldwide messaging market, which is predicted to break $300 billion for the first time in 2014, and Informa Telecoms and Media have stated that up to 75% of operators are looking to develop and launch new SMS-based services. In addition, operators’ adoption of cloud-based services, which will become a prominent delivery model in 2012, also means that these innovations will be brought to market faster.
The shift towards enterprise messaging
Acision expects an acceleration of businesses embracing text messaging in order to fundamentally increase reach and therefore relevance on mobile. More flexible working practices and a trend towards consumerization has resulted in an increased reliance on mobile devices, which in turn is driving this shift towards messaging. At the same time, messaging addresses the enterprise’s focus on finding new ways to cut IT costs, enhance employee performance and improve customer satisfaction and marketing.
The rise of the mobile workforce will drive demand for comprehensive services which are tailored to enterprise users. Services such as messaging alerts/notifications for IT, reminder services, group messaging, field-worker protection and prepaid SMS reply as well as mobile marketing and couponing will leverage the mobile messaging channel and reinforce it as an integral part of wider business and marketing communications.
Emergency communication/broadcasting systems
Acision believes that in 2012, we will see the emergence of emergency and broadcast communications systems based on messaging. The power of messaging as a method of communication was highlighted with each major world event of 2011, as services such as SMS, IM and social media networks proved to spread news of incidents faster than any other medium. At the same time, no method of communication is as widely available to the government to interact with those impacted by these events.
