Messaging company Acision has forecast mobile messaging revenues of US$165 billion globally by 2011, 200 per cent higher than previous industry predictions. Since its inception fifteen years ago, mobile messaging has delivered a 6,000 per cent return on investment but the growth phase is not yet over, with markets such as India, North America and China seeing phenomenal traffic increases.  Even within the more mature markets of Western Europe and South East Asia, messaging still has huge growth potential.  Acision believes that the following five steps have the capability to double messaging revenues for operators in the next four years:
*        Personalising the messaging experience with added functionality relevant to specific consumer and enterprise segments
*        Using partnerships and multi-play strategies to extend mobile messaging to the fixed environment using converged messaging
*        Subsidising mobile internet revenues through messaging integration with interactive web applications such as Facebook and eBay
*        Mobilising enterprise applications
*        Leveraging the mobile marketing opportunities offered by the reach of messaging platforms.

Acision CEO Rory Buckley explains Acision's optimism; "SMS has achieved more than anyone imagined it would fifteen years ago, but speculation that messaging has reached its peak ignores much of today's market dynamic.  Peer-to-peer communication is showing no sign of stalling or declining, and already in South East Asia operators' efforts to differentiate their services by adding features such as out-of-office and blacklisting are proving popular with subscribers. However, it is with application-to-peer and peer-to-application messaging that the wider opportunities lie. We believe that capitalising on the opportunities afforded by web applications as Facebook (essentially an enormous web-based multimedia messaging environment) and effectively harnessing mobile marketing will enable operators to double mobile messaging revenues by 2011."
www.acision.com