The state of SMS in SA
With new research predicting that some developed markets may see falling SMS volumes, the case is not quite the same in South Africa – yet.
Financial services firm, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited’s (DTTL) predicts that instant messaging services on mobile phones (MIM) will carry more than twice the volume of messages sent via SMS (50 billion versus 21 billion per day).
However, it says that of the 70 billion messages which will be sent via mobile, text message revenues are projected at about $100 billion this year, compared to just $2 billion for mobile IM services.
In, 2014, the firm says that mobile instant messaging services (IMS) will generate about 70% of all messages sent from mobile phones – but only about 3% of the value.
SA operators respond
According to Vodacom, telcos across the globe are experiencing a decline in SMS revenues due to the increasing popularity of social messaging applications and this is driven by a high adoption of smartphones.
“The high smartphone adoption has presented us with a big opportunity in terms of unlocking the power of the internet for our customers, resulting in increased data revenue. For an example, Instant Messaging is now growing at about 10% month-on-month,” it said.
For Vodacom, messaging revenue made up 5.8% of its service revenues for the first half of this year. “Our SMS to instant messaging ratio now equates to 25:1,” it said.
As per Vodacom’s published interim results announcement, the group said that messaging volumes have declined 7.5% in H1.
Cell C Acting CEO, Jose Dos Santos, noted that instant messaging clients are impacting on the rate of SMS growth.
“Cell C’s SMS traffic, based on application SMS and promotional services, continues to increase. SMS remains a popular means of communication in SA, based on the large number of feature phones still in circulation.
“We expect that once there is about 40% – 50% penetration of smartphones in the market, we may start seeing similar trends to the UK,” he said.
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