Messaging to Prevail, says Jupiter

Analyst JupiterResearch says that messaging will still be the predominant data usage on mobile phones in 2011 despite a significant growth in mobile content and services usage over the next five years. According to a new JupiterResearch report, "European Mobile Forecast, 2006 to 2011", 72% of premium mobile services revenues will derive from messaging in 2011.
Total European mobile content, services and messaging revenues will grow from €21.9 billion (£14.4 billion) in 2006 to €27.7 billion in 2011. Content and services will grow strongly - from €2.2 billion at the end of 2006 to €7.9 billion by 2011, but messaging will remain the dominant source of non-voice revenue. Growth in MMS, email and Instant Messaging will more than offset the decline in SMS revenues, while infotainment (video/TV, games, music, etc.) will outperform maturing personalisation revenues by a factor of nearly three-to-one.
The paying audience for mobile services will reach critical mass, but not make the transition to mass market (i.e. more than 50% penetration rate) within five years. However some audiences, such as MMS and presence messaging, have the potential to break through into mainstream in the longer term if a number of structural issues are addressed.
“Mobile operators and new entrants in the mobile space must leverage the peer-to-peer nature of a personal communications platform to create a new form of content creation and consumption” says Thomas Husson, Mobile Analyst at JupiterResearch. “Entertainment will strongly differ on the third screen and remains to be invented, bearing in mind that consumers’ demand is still skewed toward younger demographics”.
The complete findings of the report are immediately available to JupiterResearch clients online. There’s more information here too on JupiterResearch's European research services.