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It is a fact that OTT applications are eating into the revenues of Operators. The factors pushing this are obvious. Firstly, the smartphones, which have enabled these apps to be accessed easily with the one-touch mechanisms and provide both graphical and more engaging means of communications, including features such as as emoticons and profile images. Secondly, the availability of WiFi connections and high speed data at cheaper rates which means that if you are on unlimited data, all chats and voice and even video calls are now included at no extra costs. The digital natives simply love these, and together with other smart-device-savvy user groups, have resulted in Operators seeing a large chunck of voice calls and messaging moving away to on-line applications. According to the mobile interaction specialist, tyntec, the recent sponsored research by mobilesquared, an analyst house, reveals that Over The Top (OTT) communications market is set to be worth $53.7 billion and have 2.1 billion smartphone users communicating by OTT services such as WhatsApp, Skype and WeChat by 2017. The whitepaper titled ‘OTT Services Blow Up the Mobile Universe. Operators Must Act Now!’ carried out primary research involving more than 40 MNOs (mobile network operators) and MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) in 68 countries and the following are some of the highlights from the paper: The rise of OTT messaging services can be attributed to the dramatic up-take of smartphones. By the end of 2013 there will be 1.6 billion smartphone users with this set to almost double by 2017 to 3.1 billion users. Skype is costing the telecoms industry $100 million per day, which equates to $36.5 billion a year. This is due to the amount of traffic the service generates – their 280 million active users spend 2 billion minutes per day on Skype. WhatsApp has grown by 233% in just 12 months and now has 300 million users globally. In that time, WhatsApp daily messages ‘sent’ have increased from 2 billion to 10 billion, further illustrating the rapid up-take of OTT services. The top 5 smartphone-based OTT markets led by China include: the USA, Brazil, India and Germany, which cumulatively total 624.1 million users and account for 67% of the total global user base. China has 445.9 million of the entire global OTT user base due to the popularity of WeChat which is comprised of 400 million users and doubled its user base from 100 million to 200 million in just 6 months. Other fast-growing OTT services include KakaoTalk in South Korea which reports over 80 million users and Japan’s Line, which has 140 million users. Of the operators interviewed, 14% claimed that OTT services have created a loss of messaging revenue of more than 21% in the last year. This is in part due to the rise of people adopting OTT services as over one-fifth of operators expect more than 50% of their subscribers to be using OTT.
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“Mobile operators need to act now as OTT services continue to chip away at their messaging revenues. The move towards working in partnership with OTT providers instead of blocking or imposing surcharges looks like an increasingly favourable strategy. Whilst it does present some threats for mobile operators, there are also lucrative opportunities to take advantage of – built on assets that operators already have in place, such as renting mobile numbers or terminating OTT traffic,” explained José Garcia, Vice President Sales and Carrier Relations at tyntec.
“The OTT market continues to accelerate thanks to the rise in demand for smartphones and the desire to communicate at the lowest available cost,” Nick Lane, Chief Analyst at mobilesquared, added. “Mobile operators are under increasing pressure to ensure they too can maximise the OTT opportunity as best they can. Blocking or ignoring the OTT challenge is a dangerous and short-term strategy that will only alienate customers. The solution is to either evolve and innovate existing voice and messaging services, or to partner with OTT service providers.”
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