Mobile instant messaging services hurt telcos

Ovum urges mobile operators to fight against the negative impact of MIMS to SMS revenues.

In a new report the independent telecoms analyst firm focuses on South Korea, a nation with arguably the highest penetration rate for MIMS in the world, and extracts lessons that can be applied by global carriers in the fight against free-to-use MIMS.

Mark Ranson, Ovum’s Analyst comments:

The threat of MIMS is real, but the next generation of messaging services also poses an opportunity for carriers prepared to adapt to the new climate. MNOs have co-operated in the past to create interoperability in SMS, and interoperability will remain crucial to the success of the next generation of messaging services.

Unfortunately for carriers, SMS cannot compete with the features and user experience that smartphone applications offer, and MIMS usage levels are therefore likely to continue to rise. It is time for MNOs to plan new post-SMS messaging services that are better capable of competing with OTT players’ offerings.

However, carriers should be aware that launching standalone MIMS is the wrong strategy in most cases. South Korean operators have tried this strategy, but so far these offerings have not been able to gain as much traction as leading OTT players KakaoTalk, Daum, and MAD Smart.

The South Korean experience is likely to be repeated internationally. For those mobile carriers that have not yet launched standalone MIMs, it is better to skip this phase, and instead begin developing services in collaboration with fellow carriers.

Operators should co-operate with each other and also with handset vendors to help combat OTT player messaging services. The resulting interoperability will be necessary to generate the scale needed to compete with leading OTT players. SMS is highly interoperable, and operators’ new messaging services must retain this interoperability if they are to have a chance of remaining a key revenue stream.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia