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| Getting the (non-text) message across |
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| Wednesday, 18 July 2007 | |
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Informa charts growth of non-SMS mobile data traffic. Speaking of which…
Global mobile data revenues from services other than SMS exceeded US$10bn in Q1 2007 according to Informa Telecoms & Media’s ‘World Cellular Data Metrics (WCDM)’. The total of US$11.3bn compares with US$8.1bn in Q1 2006. Informa says that the figure means that nearly one third of mobile data revenues now come from non-SMS services, suggesting operators' investments in advanced technologies are finally reaping rewards. It’s a mixed bag of tricks across different operators, though. Out of 70 operators tracked in ‘WCDM’, the proportion of data revenues generated by non-SMS ranged from just 1% (Vodafone Nor, adds Informa, does this mean the end of the road for SMS. Worldwide SMS traffic was up year-on-year by around 50% to more than 620bn messages in Q1 2007. SMS revenues were up 23% over the same period, helping total data revenues to reach US$34.3bn in the quarter, the highest ever. The higher increase in SMS traffic compared to revenue reflects lower SMS tariffs and the greater availability of bundled packages. Finding its voice Another company interested in life after text SMS is mobile VAS developer Kirusa. Yesterday this enterprise announced the closing of US$10mn Series C financing. The funding, led by Helion Venture Partners and Nexus India Capital, apparently comes on the heels of an increasing number of carrier wins by Kirusa, and high growth in the voice SMS space which is one of its specialties. Kirusa holds a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office for its voice SMS technology. Kirusa, a company that draws much of its talent from Voice SMS is the next big thing on the radar says Kirusa. It enables people to send SMS messages by speaking. A user dials ‘*’ followed by the recipient’s number, and speaks a short message of up to 30 seconds in length. The recipient then gets an SMS message from the sender, and can ‘click’ (or dial) a number in the message to directly access the spoken message. After listening to the message, the recipient can reply by voice or text, or can forward the message. This has a number of advantages – it is intuitive, it can be used by people who can’t read or write, and this form of messaging can convey emotion. It also drives up operator VAS revenue. According to Kirusa voice SMS is the fastest growing VAS in John Williamson |
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