CanalPDA

According to the latest forecasts from Informa Telecoms & Media, SMS will remain a significant source of revenues and traffic for mobile operators on a global basis until at least 2015. Global SMS revenues are forecast to rise to US$136.9 billion in 2015 from US$105.5 billion in 2010, while global SMS traffic is expected to increase to 8.7 trillion messages in 2015 from 5 trillion messages in 2010.
Continuar leyendo »

16 December 2009 – Despite declining mobile handsets sales in 2009, smartphones continue to represent the fastest growing and most profitable segment of the mobile handset market. Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that volume sales of these devices are to grow by 33.5% year-on-year in 2009 and by 36% in 2010. However, the importance of the smartphone segment is underlined by the fact that, although they will only account for 27% of the total number of handsets sold in 2010, they will represent over half (55%) of the value of the total mobile handset market and almost two thirds (64%) in terms of profitability.

“The strong volume growth rate and high smartphone ASPs (average selling prices) make this the most profitable segment in the current mobile phone market. In 2010, we expect profits from smartphones to represent an impressive 64% of total mobile handset market profits. As demand for mid-tier handsets declines, competition in the smartphone segment is set to intensify which is forcing manufacturers to innovate and differentiate their products in terms of hardware, software and content,” commented Malik Kamal-Saadi, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and co-author of Future Mobile Handsets report.

Attracted by the high volume growth and strong profit margins, many new entrants have entered or are entering the market. Volume market leaders like Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, are being challenged by RIM, Apple, HTC and Palm who are significantly eroding their market share in the smartphone market. Informa Telecoms & Media expects the market share of these four challengers to jump to 35% of all smartphones sold in 2009 from 32% in 2008 and just 24% in 2007.

Key to the success of new entrants, is the adoption of new smartphone operating systems that have been built from scratch and better reflect the realities of modern mobile device requirements. In addition, they are not burdened with the support of a long legacy of devices and content already in market. However, the challenge for these players is to keep pace with innovation rather than getting trapped in the progressive OS upgrade cycles.

“Volume market leaders have responded with a multitude of me-too iPhones, offering multi-touch and an enhanced internet experience but true innovation is still lacking from many incumbent OEMs portfolios. However, under the pressure of competition some incumbents such as Nokia and Microsoft are now revamping the architecture of their OSs to keep pace with innovation and some such as Motorola, Samsung, and Sony-Ericsson are now radically changing their terminal software strategies. These players (Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, and Samsung) have opted for Google’s Android as key OS to bring innovation to their smartphone portfolios. These changes will completely transform the smartphone market landscape and could potentially lead to the emergence of new leaders in the mobile handsets market,” Kamal-Saadi concludes.

http://www.futuremobilehandsets.com

6th March 2009 – Informa Telecoms & Media expects the Mobile Content and Services market to generate over US$340 billion in end-user service revenues in 2013, up from around US$183 billion in 2008. The two most significant service categories for revenues in 2008 were mobile messaging and mobile Internet, which together contributed over 80% of the total revenues.

In recent years, many new players have emerged in the mobile content & services value chain and numerous merger, acquisition, and partnership activities have taken place. The traditional players have been joined by a slew of new companies and a significant list of players from other markets including the likes of Google and Apple. It is these companies that present the most credible threat to mobile operators and to the degree of control and influence they have over mobile subscribers.

“In the coming years, the area that will see the most activity and will make or break many players in the mobile content and services value chain is that of the distribution channels”
- comments Shailendra Pandey, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media

“Off-portal (direct-to-consumer) mobile content distribution is becoming common in most developed markets, and in those where it isn’t, operators are under increasing pressure to open up their user base to third parties”
- adds Shailendra Pandey

The billing relationship operators have with subscribers, marks them apart from other companies, allowing them to exert significant levels of control over what content the majority of subscribers have access to.

However, research from Informa Telecoms & Media shows that this picture is evolving as brand owners and media companies are increasingly looking to leverage the consumer loyalty they have developed through their years of market presence and invest in direct-to-consumer channels. The research is contained in the latest strategic report, Mobile Content and Services, 7th Edition, published by Informa Telecoms & Media.

Mobile Content and Services is the most authoritative report for analysis and forecasts on mobile data services. In addition to answering key industry questions, the report highlights service initiatives and case studies from around the globe and future roadmaps for players across the mobile content & services value chain. All the research and analysis is backed by detailed global, regional and country level forecasts to 2013.

The report includes 650+ pages of in-depth analysis on all mobile data services including the following topics:

* Mobile Internet
* Mobile Social Networking
* Mobile Advertising
* Mobile Entertainment
* Mobile Messaging
* Location Based Services (LBS)
* Mobile payments, banking and financial services
* Plus exclusive Industry Survey 2008

http://www.informatm.com/content.

Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that in 2009:
- Total new handset sales will fall 10.1% year on year
- Sales of smartphones will maintain robust growth, 35.3% year on year
- Smartphone penetration will reach 13.5% of new handsets sold.

In 2013, Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts:
- Smartphone penetration will treble to just over 38%
- The move to adopt open source will help the Symbian Foundation maintain its leadership over Android, Linux and Microsoft.

5th March 2009 – “The smartphone segment is no longer as simple as it was a few years ago”, says Gavin Byrne, Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. “Since early 2007 Symbian, Microsoft, Linux and BlackBerry OS have been joined by Apple’s OS X iPhone, Android and recently Palm’s Web OS”.

“In 2008, there were almost 162 million smartphones sold, surpassing notebook sales for the first time”, says Byrne. Just over 49% of smartphones sold in 2008 were based on Symbian OS, a significant drop from a near 65% share it enjoyed one year earlier. While this is in large part due to the relatively poor performance of Nokia’s smartphone range, it is also an indication of the popularity enjoyed by competing platforms including Linux, BlackBerry OS, Microsoft Windows Mobile, OS X iPhone and new entrant Android. This underlines the growing challenge that these platforms may present, in the mind of device vendors and operators.

Changing software platform strategies

Openness is a key criterion, while all in the mobile telecoms space now see the revenue potential of applications and services. Now more than ever, handset vendors must develop strategies to maximise these new revenue streams while reducing costs. Factors like these have led device vendors to alter their software platform strategies, like LG’s recent public declaration of its intention to launch 50 new mobile handsets using Microsoft Windows Mobile. In the past year Motorola, Sony Ericsson and HTC have also significantly modified their approach to the smartphone market. It has also become a growing focus for ODMs and for the operator focussed strategies of ZTE and Huawei.

Developers are key

As more and more value moves from device hardware to software, and also to content, developers are becoming increasingly central to the mobile handset value chain. Platform and applications development are in many cases already reaping the benefits of open source components and approaches, with LiMo Foundation, Android and the Symbian Foundation being the most significant device platforms in market. “The decision to move the Symbian platform to open source is crucial in maintaining its leadership over Android, Linux and Microsoft”, says Byrne. The growing importance of content development is reflected in the efforts that Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Adobe have gone to facilitate development and a route to market, as represented by their application stores.

Impressive growth

“In the wider handset market, Informa Telecoms & Media expects that the global recession will cause total new handset sales to fall by 10.1% in volume terms in 2009” adds Byrne. “However, its effect will not be felt equally across all segments. While demand in the mid tier will fall away during 2009, sales of new smartphones will grow over 30% to 211.2 million units, driven by innovative new devices and operator subsidies designed to promote mobile data consumption, so that by 2013 almost four in every ten handsets sold worldwide will be a smartphone. With impressive growth rates like this, the smartphone market has proved too attractive to companies in adjacent market segments, such as leading notebook vendor, Acer.”