Report: Operators fumbling $4.9B in SMS revenue

Global mobile operators are losing out on as much as $4.9 billion in annual revenue from lost opportunities to create value-added SMS messages, according to new research issued by market analysis firm Informa Telecoms & Media and commissioned by SMS services provider Anam Mobile. While corporate-financed research should be taken with a grain of salt, Informa's findings are interesting. The firm reports consumers sent over 600 billion messages worldwide during the first quarter--more than 75 messages per subscriber--for an assumed total of 2.4 trillion messages for all of 2007, indicating strong potential for new SMS-based premium data services like banking transfers, advertising and corporate functionality. Informa suggests if operators were to charge consumers roughly $4.75 per month for mobile banking services, they could generate an average additional revenue of $0.0020 for every text message sent on their network if even 1.5 percent of subscribers initiate one account transfer per month. 

Informa argues that since a large proportion of text messaging services are included as an element of bundled deals, they are in effect free to the subscriber, meaning each individual message has a low perceived value to the user and almost no financial value to the operator. "After voice, text messaging is still the most popular application on mobiles," said Dan Winterbottom, Informa mobile content and applications senior analyst. "Yet when it comes to innovation and new services, text messaging is being ignored by many operators in favor of new data services. There is an innate understanding by subscribers of how texting works--this could be utilized by operators when they introduce new services."

For more on the Informa report:
- read this release

Related Articles:
Study: U.S. mobile market penetration to exceed 100% by 2013
Non-SMS data revenues exceed $10 billion in Q1