According to a new report from Portio Research, 2008 will be the year that the worldwide mobile industry becomes a one Trillion US Dollar industry. For an industry to go from zero to USD 1 trillion in just 20 years is a staggering achievement, equal to a CAGR of almost 30 percent sustained for 20 years, an achievement previously unequalled by any other industry at any time in human history.
2007 became the year to see worldwide mobile handset shipments exceed 1 billion for the first time, and as 2008 begins so the world also crosses the highly significant 50 percent mobile penetration point, and the industry enters a year where gross industry revenues are set to reach 1 trillion Dollars.
As mobile voice prices have declined and margins have come under intense pressure, network operators have been forced to look at non-voice services to win new customers and boost margins. A wide variety of value-added non-voice services have emerged, from messaging and mobile music, to email, mobile TV and video downloads, location based services, games, gambling and mobile payment services. In 2007, worldwide, non-voice services accounted for 18.9 percent of total mobile services revenues, and this figure looks set to keep growing, reaching more than 25.5 percent by the end of 2012. To put that in context, worldwide consumer spending on non-voice mobile services in 2012 will exceed 251 Billion US Dollars - more than a quarter of a trillion Dollars per annum.
In 2008 Portio Research estimates MNOs worldwide will collect total revenues of US$874.3 Billion. Interestingly, voice and SMS get little publicity in the mobile world these days. Just take a look at the conference agenda for the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2008. Looking down the list of topics covered in the 4 day conference, all the talk is about mobile TV and video, HSPA, mobile IM, DRM, mobile finance, mobile search, social networking, data pricing and mobile enterprise solutions.
All of these are exciting growth areas and most of these topics offer a great deal of promise for the future. But amid all this excitement, there is barely one mention of voice as a subject, and barely any mention of SMS as an application, yet voice and SMS generate 90 percent of the total service revenues flowing into this industry right now, and itÃ's predominantly voice and SMS that have built this US$1 trillion business over the last 20 years.
Their forecasts show that in 2008, 88.9 percent of total MNO service revenues worldwide will come from voice and SMS, and that figure is likely to remain as high as 85 percent even by the end of 2011. But that still leaves more than US$161 billion from data services in 2008, rising to over US$251 by 2011.
Posted to the site on 2nd July 2008
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/32155.php