The usage associated with these services, while predominantly incremental at present, will increasingly substitute for traditional communications services, according to a new report, Opportunities for Non-traditional Players in Communications Markets, published by Analysys, the global advisers on telecoms, IT and media.
"Online communities and portals create a market for communications that occupy a middle ground between one-to-one and one-to-many interactions," says the report's author, Stephen Sale. "The success of many of these services calls into question established ideas of user behaviour and suggests alternative means of addressing the communications market. Non-traditional players can capitalise on their presence online and in end-user devices to make inroads into telecoms companies core revenues."
Key findings from the new report include:
- Skype and similar services could rob the traditional telephony market of as much as USD18.2 billion, equivalent to 5.4% of the global fixed telephony market, in 2011.
- The market for content aggregation of on-demand video by online retailers is likely to be around USD820 million in 2011.
- Online players will fend off competition from direct-to-consumer portals and the mobile sector to take more than 60% of a digital music aggregation market worth USD4.3 billion by 2011.
This new report looks at the opportunities for non-traditional players in communications markets and identifies potential weaknesses in the existing and emerging portfolios of telcos. It considers services enabled by connectivity, which are principally voice services but also include messaging, video communications and related applications, as well as video and audio content distribution markets, including broadcast and on-demand services.