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Mobile Non-voice Market Registers 139% Growth in 2004
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According to IDC India's recently published research report on the mobile data market the overall non-voice market registered a growth of 139% for Calendar Year (CY) 2004 as compared to CY 2003.
"The market has grown rapidly due to increasing awareness and acceptance of mobile value added services and applications among subscribers", says Mugdh Rajit, Analyst, Communication Research, IDC India. At present non-voice revenue contributes around 4.7% to the total mobile services revenue, which is around Rs. 14,560 crore. Though it is well behind the international standards, it is quickly catching up.
With mobile subscriber base of over 47 million at the end of 2004 and an annual growth of over 100%, Indian market is one of the fastest growing markets in the Asia Pacific region. Traditionally, the thrust of the service providers was on offering only vanilla voice services but the declining Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and also the margins on voice calls has made them think of alternate revenue streams with better margins. And data services seem to be the first choice of all the operators.
IDC segments Non-Voice market into three categories namely; Short Messaging Service, Multimedia Messaging Service and Other data services. Short Messaging Service can be both normal peer-to-peer SMS (P2P SMS) and Peer-to-application SMS (P2A SMS). P2A SMS revenues are counted under other data services as per IDC definition. MMS is a multimedia message which can combine both audio, video and picture along with text while other data services include services such as Internet access, ring tones download, games download, wallpapers, logos etc.
Overall Non-Voice Market By Revenue: CY 2004
SMS is the biggest contributor to the overall revenues of non-voice market and is expected to remain so in the near future. MMS services have not yet picked up as expected because of lack of handsets and high cost of service. "Among other data services, monophonic ring tones are the most popular ones with an annual traffic of over 19 million" adds Mugdh. Polyphonic tunes and other downloads like wallpapers, logos, games etc. are also fast catching up and are expected to grow much faster once there is more number of compatible handsets available at a lower cost. Another barrier to the growth of these services has been the high cost of service itself.
Other data services like wallpapers, ring tones, games, P2A SMS etc. is the fastest growing segment in the Non-voice space. This will be one space to watch out for in future. Though the present size is only around Rs. 191 crore it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 65% to reach Rs. 2,302 crore by 2008."
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