Social Media taking over Telecom SMS Revenues

 

After the revolution of smartphones, third-party IM and voice applications like Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, Facebook, Twitter and Google Voice have become very popular, and started to challange mobile carriers at their own game.  

A research made by the the analyst firm of Ovum, has estimated that operators lost $8.7 billion in 2010, and $13.9 billion in  SMS revenue in 2011, as a result of their customers using social media messaging, instead of using carriers’ own text messaging services. Also, a different report from mobile analytics firm Bytemobile has also charted huge growth in the use of social media on mobile, with operators getting no benefit as a result.

In the Longer term, Ovum believes that by 2016 mobile data will bring in $419 billion in revenues for operators, out of a total service revenues of $1,047 billion.