Operator Data Revenues
These days, a large percentage of my work involves applications performing some kind of Internet access. Hence, it’s interesting to see if applications such as these are affecting mobile data revenue.
The latest Informa research shows that nearly one third of mobile data revenue now comes from non-SMS services…
"Global mobile data revenues from services other than SMS exceeded US$10 billion in 1Q07 according to Informa’s World Cellular Data Metrics (WCDM). The total of US$11.3 billion compares with US$8.1 billion in 1Q06."
However, this revenue varies greatly by country…
But what are people actually doing while using the data? Vodafone’s recent results provide more insight…
"Data revenue growth remained strong, increasing by 28.9% on an organic basis, similar to the growth in the previous quarter. Data revenue continues to benefit from growth in business services and the increasing penetration of 3G devices, which have nearly doubled since June 2006 to 17.1 million. Handheld business devices increased by 87% since June last year, with Vodafone Mobile Connect data cards up 70%."
Hence, I suspect most of the increased data revenue is from business people using the Internet from their laptops rather than any of the innovative new mobile data applications you and I are creating. In fact, thinking about it, I also probably use more data this way than through applications and browsing on the phone itself.