Messaging will dominate mobile data in 2011


18 Jan 2007

Messaging will still be the predominant data usage on European mobile phones in 2011 despite a significant growth in mobile content and services over the next five years, a new report from JupiterResearch has claimed.

Jupiter’s European Mobile Forecast 2006 to 2011 predicts that 72pc of premium mobile services revenues will derive from messaging that year.

Total European mobile content, services and messaging revenues will grow from €21.9bn in 2006 to €27.7bn in 2011.

Content and services will grow from €2.2bn at the end of 2006 to €7.9bn by 2011 but messaging will remain the dominant source of non-voice revenue.

Growth in multimedia messaging, email and instant messaging will more than offset the decline in SMS revenues, while infotainment such as video, TV and games will outperform maturing personalisation revenues by a factor of nearly three-to-one.

The paying audience for mobile services is forecast to reach critical mass but will not make the transition to mass market – more than 50pc penetration – within five years.

However, some audiences, such as MMS and presence messaging, have the potential to break through into mainstream in the longer term if certain structural issues are addressed.

“Mobile operators and new entrants in the mobile space must leverage the peer-to-peer nature of a personal communications platform to create a new form of content creation and consumption” said Thomas Husson, mobile analyst at JupiterResearch.

“Entertainment will strongly differ on the third screen and remains to be invented, bearing in mind that consumers’ demand is still skewed toward younger demographics,” Husson said.

By John Kennedy