A report from Portio Research forecasts a healthy future for SMS, which continues to be the star of the data services show with traffic volumes and revenues that continue to confound predictions.
Declining prices mean SMS revenues will not grow as strongly as SMS volumes, but , by 2012 the global SMS market is expected to reach 3.7 trillion messages and $67bn.
So Portio concludes that SMS continues to succeed as the cheapest, quickest and easiest to use form of peer-to-peer mobile communication. “Markets have continued to grow and greatly exceeded the predictions of similar research carried out in 2005.”
But Portio’s report also paints an exciting future for other mobile messaging technologies – especially instant messaging and mobile email. By 2011, the report predicts, mobile IM will finally overtake SMS as the mainstream messaging service. Portion thinks operators need to strike a balance between SMS and IM pricing in order to prevent the cannibalisation of SMS revenues in the future.