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Fuzzy Logic 2.3 trillion SMS messages to be sent in 2008 costing $60.2 billion!
Fuzzy Logic 2.3 trillion SMS messages to be sent in 2008 costing $60.2 billion! | 2.3 trillion SMS messages to be sent in 2008 costing $60.2 billion! |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 19 December 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 2 Again missing from the Gartner press release is a figure for Australia, but a News.com.au report on this story says that Gartner predicts 10.8 billion mobile messages will be sent in 2008 in Australia, a figure that should grow to 11.2 billion in 2011. At this point, Tole Hart, the research director at Gartner, says that: “The market is being driven by increased penetration of users, more frequent usage of peer-to-peer messaging, and unlimited and bucketed messaging plans. There has also been some uptake of mobile e-mail via POP3 mailboxes and mobile IM service, but it's very small compared with the uptake of SMS. These services are used primarily as an extension to a PC. However, the market is seeing a number of consumers using BlackBerry and Palm Treo devices to access address books, phone numbers and e-mail.” Western Europe is predicted to continue seeing strong growth across all types of mobile message until 2010, with 202 billion messages to be sent in 2007 and 215 billion in 2008. Commenting on the messaging market, Stephanie Pittet, principal research analyst at Gartner said that: “However, due to competitive price cutting, an expected increase in international charging regulations and more unlimited bundles, the revenue generated from peer-to-peer messaging is tending to flatten and is even showing some decline from 2007 (this trend is affected by exchange rate variations). Africa is expected to see sustained healthy growth and the low price of SMS compared with voice calls makes it an ideal service in countries where people have low buying power.” Although saying mobile IM growth has been small in comparison with SMS text messaging, Gartner then says that alternatives to SMS have become much more common. Mobile consumer email is big thanks to smartphones and Blackberry-style devices, while mobile IM is also becoming popular thanks to the availability of previously computer-only IM programs becoming available on a range of popular handsets and mobile phone networks. Garter’s Ingelbrecht comes back to give operators guidance on pricing and what Gartner’s crystal ball reveals, and says that: “To sustain growth over the next few years, carriers should look to social-networking applications to drive traffic, working where possible with popular established social-networking sites. Mobile search and advertising also offer attractive potential drivers for SMS traffic, although most carriers appear poorly placed to support the end-to-end campaign management and reporting requirements of media buyers and advertisers.” So, if you want to save money, try accessing Gmail or your existing email service on your phone, try one of the Instant Messaging programs on your phone such as Windows Live Messenger, Fring or others to only pay for the data used in sending messages, something that is much cheaper than the cost of individual SMS messages, and look for bundles that give you the best deal for your dollars, wherever you live in the world. Happy texting!
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