Mobile data is the new black!
The Q2 Update on wireless data by Chetan Sharma Consulting is out, and underscores the continuing trend that carriers are making an increasing % of revenue from mobile data services. In the early days of wireless data, Nextel (then an independent company) scored the highest ARPU by delivering data services and also PTT (push to talk), a key differentiator from all other US wireless operators. In this update, AT&T scores a similar win with the Safari-enabled iPhone (over 7M devices sold and over 10M App store downloads so far). The other noteworthy stat. is the 10x growth in data ARPU relative to growth in voice ARPU (46 cents VS 5 cents).
A few trends/observations in light of these numbers:
- Appetite for off-portal mobile lifestyle services is likely to keep increasing. Most services are being offered on-portal and I haven't found that many off-portal services beyond the basic mobile social networking and 'dating' services. In-forma predicts that over 70% of data revenues in the next 5 years will come from applications that are downloaded directly (whether mobile browser based or native app. driven) rather than through an on-portal experience.
- Creation of mobile-only pages. In 2007, while at aeroprise, we noticed how the trend moved from people simply responding to emails on a Blackberry device to composing on them. Simple, presence-oriented pages focused on mobile browsing paradigms will be the order of the day atleast in the early days.
- RETRO will be the order of the day, and SMS will continue to be a killer app. since it addresses the reach issue that publishers crave (with over 95% of devices out there being sms capable). For all the talk (no pun intended) around mobile data, less than a third of devices are mobile data-capable today. The early winners offering SMS-based services (here, here, here) - especially in emerging markets - are here, though most are still perfecting business models around their consumer momentum. From these Q2 numbers, 40+% of wireless data revenues come from messaging and related apps.
Disclosure: I am involved with Aeroprise (enterprise), mytoday SMS (lifestyle/consumer) and Morf Mobile (platform), all of whom are both contributing to and benefitting from these trends.
