Digital Lifescapes

Mobile messaging today encompasses both the more traditional services offered by mobile network operators -- such as SMS or MMS -- and the popular Over the Top (OTT) messaging services from software application providers, such as WhatsApp and WeChat. SMS usage, specifically person-to-person (P2P) texting, has declined rapidly in many markets, while its growth has slowed in others. However, there are forms of SMS messaging which do continue to see some growth -- in particular, within the enterprise messaging sector. Furthermore, SMS has continued to succeed in less developed regions of the world, particularly those with a large number of feature phones, and those that have low 3G or 4G infrastructure penetration. According to the latest worldwide study by Juniper Research , mobile and online messaging traffic will reach 160 trillion per year by 2019, that's up from 94.2 trillion this year -- equating to approximately 438 billion messages sent and received by users on a daily b...

Messaging on smartphones is assumed to be secure, but recent reports of new threats to user data integrity has created a renewed interest in the BlackBerry BBM robust messaging service. Meanwhile, independent software developers will offer enhanced app-based encryption solutions for other smartphones. Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest global market study of short message service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS) security hardware and software -- such as SMS firewalls and mobile messaging security platforms. "The popularity of SMS and MMS has soared over the last decade, but carriers around the globe are just now beginning to seriously evaluate and deploy mobile messaging security solutions, forced by economic, regulatory, and attack conditions," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics Research . Infonetics has identified an important trend that is a result of more government regulatory pressure across the globe. Major mobile netw...

The worldwide mobile messaging market was worth $179.2 billion in 2010, it's forecast to rise to $209.8 billion in 2011, and on to $334.7 billion by the end of 2015 -- at a CAGR of 13.3 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to the latest market study by Portio Research . The Asia Pacific region generated the highest mobile messaging revenue in 2010 and Latin America produced the least. Among the four mobile messaging service types, SMS yielded the highest revenue for operators in 2010, followed by MMS, then mobile e-mail and mobile instant messaging (IM). SMS made the highest contribution to worldwide mobile messaging revenue in 2010 with a 63.9 percent share, followed by MMS with 18.1 percent. Mobile e-mail revenue made up 14.2 percent, and mobile IM’s 2010 share was 3.8 percent. Clearly, basic text messaging (SMS) is still the core revenue generating messaging service. In 2010, worldwide SMS revenue stood at $114.6 billion and is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 6.8 p...