The volume of OTT messaging traffic would be twice that of person-to-person SMS by the top of the year, in line with data collected by Informa Telecoms & Media.
Although there are way more SMS users globally, 3.5bn in comparison with around 586.3m OTT users on the end of 2012, each OTT user sends a typical of 32.6 messages day-to-day, while just five SMS messages are sent.
Last year, 19.1bn OTT messages were sent per day, with a regular of 17.6bn SMS messages sent. Informa believes that by the tip of 2013, 41bn messages should be sent everyday using OTT providers, with a mean of nineteen.5bn SMS messages sent.
OTT services has been adopted way more quickly than SMS was and this has impacted mobile operators’ revenue. Operators in Spain have revenues decline from €1.1bn in 2007 to €758.5m in 2011. But Informa says that SMS revenues globally will still increase through to 2016.
Brands go OTT
Asked whether commercial use of OTT apps is at the way, an Informa spokesperson, said: “Until there’s universal penetration of smartphones and mobile broadband within a market that could support the event of an OTT-based service, companies – including brands and advertisers – tend to remain more focussed on SMS-based services. That’s for lots of reasons: a) reach b) low-budget and c) ease of use.
“Even if a market reaches the stage where there’s a high enough penetration of smartphones and mobile broadband to support commercial app-based messaging communications, one of many key inhibitors for the economic use of OTT applications is that there are various these applications in the marketplace.
“Organisations likely will be unable afford to develop and update services to handle all the different applications that their customers, employees or suppliers may well be using, in order that they might decide to think about one or two, which can again effectively limit the reach of the industrial service.”
Last month, Spanish police used WhatsApp to speak while seeking to catch a gang of jewelry thieves operating in a variety of cities around the country.