Messaging Loses Death-Grip On Mobile Data Revenue

This article starts off by saying that “despite the promises of 3G mobile content in boosting telco profits, messaging services remain the top data revenue earner in the Asia-Pacific region last year”. Messaging (both SMS and MMS) contributed 41.2 percent of the region’s total mobile data revenues in 2005. Considering that a few short years about that figure was in the 90% range it indicates other data services are beginning to fulfill the operators hopes of revenue diversity. “Revenues garnered from premium content across the Asia-Pacific totaled US$9.5 billion in 2005, compared to slightly over US$5 billion in 2004, according to figures from Frost & Sullivan.”
Across the region premium content contributed 29.4 percent of data revenues last year, according to Frost and Sullivan.
An interesting comparison is in the final paragraph: “In April this year, Singapore-based operator MobileOne slashed the price of its unlimited 3G data plan by 65 percent to S$68 (US$42) a month, in a bid to spur mobile broadband adoption in the island-state. Company CEO Neil Montefiore hopes this will drive data usage and increase 3G adoption among cellphone users.” That’s a pretty high figure (down from S$199) and I think is aimed more at laptop users than mobile phone users.

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