OTT 'Fragmenting Messaging Market'

Mobile data company Acision says that while OTT (Over The Top) services are fragmenting the messaging market, SMS still offers the most ubiquitous platform. 

Commenting on the news last month that WhatsApp has now served 1bn messages in a day, Tom Veldman, director product marketing at Acision, says: "While the rapid introduction of OTT messaging services has brought innovation in messaging capabilities and attractive charging models, they are also fundamentally fragmenting the messaging landscape. Recent statistics from comScore indicated that smartphone penetration in Europe is currently less than 40 per cent, and even less in other parts of the world. This, and the lack of interoperability between OTT services, means that such services are isolating the majority of the market.

"The ubiquity of SMS, on the other hand, offers a number of unique advantages. Firstly, a reach of more than 5bn people globally across any brand, network and device type, even without 3G. Also, the telco grade SMS infrastructure deployed around the globe ensures uncompromised quality and availability. For businesses, this has the unique value of reaching everybody as well as being the most secure and reliable method of communication, making it highly suitable for enterprise and machine-to-machine communications."

Veldman also says that SMS is still evolving with premium, personalised service enhancements for the consumer and enterprise being offered from within the cloud. "The rich communication services being introduced by mobile operators, such as RCS-e, are building on these strengths, leveraging SMS to ensure interoperability with all mobile users, providing a reach of 5bn mobile users from day 1 of introducing these new services," he says. "RCS-e incorporates OTT-esque features, such as multi-media file transfer and threaded conversation views, providing mobile operators a service evolution which will enable them to provide the best possible mobile messaging experience to all users."