An interesting analysis of the messaging market surfaced this week with Juniper Research's new report on OTT and traditional messaging service. Contrary to what is popularly perceived of the messaging market, OTT messaging applications are not taking down SMS or MMS anytime soon when it comes to raking in the revenues. According to the research company, revenue generated from OTT messaging applications will be less than 1% of that from SMS and MMS in 2019 with SMS continuing its dominance in terms of overall revenue contribution.
The overall messaging traffic however, will continue to grow phenomenally, said Juniper Research, from 31 trillion last year to 100 trillion messages in 2019 globally, driven mainly by OTT messaging applications such as WhatsApp and LINE. Total revenues from messaging is expected to decline from $113.5bn in 2014 to $112.9bn in 2019, a reduction of $600m, added the company.
Juniper added that MNOs are benefiting from the growth in the A2P (application to person) sector which will generate significant revenues over the next five years, as enterprise messaging sees considerable uptake in the form of two-step verification, and notification services.
Juniper found that OTT messaging services are facing a struggle to monetize services as they have yet to succeed in using advertising at scale, due to limited acceptance by consumers, particularly in Asian markets. In these markets, messaging services have relied upon in-app purchases such as sticker sets to generate income. These players however, might find new ways to augment their revenues, including venturing into the payment markets, said Juniper, such as that done by LINE via LINE Pay, Facebook via its Messenger and Snapshat via its ‘Snapcash’.
