According to Juniper Research, the worldwide revenue for messaging market is expected to decline from $113.5 billion in 2014 to $112.9 billion in 2019.
Further, the messaging traffic is forecasted to double by 2019 ? driven by over-the-top (OTT) messaging applications such as WhatsApp and LINE to 100 trillion by 2019 from about 31 trillion in 2014. Meanwhile, the revenue generated from each OTT message is forecasted to be less than one per cent of the revenue generated from SMS and MMS in 2019.
The research firm states that the OTT messaging players are struggling to monetise services. OTTs have not yet succeeded in using advertising at scale to monetise their services, due to a limited acceptance by consumers, particularly in Asian markets. Messaging services have relied upon in-application purchases such as sticker sets to generate income.
Juniper Research concludes that SMS continues to dominate the market, with mobile network operators benefiting from growth in application to person (A2P) segment. A2P SMS is expected to generate significant growth over the next five years, as enterprise messaging witnesses significant uptake in the form of two-step verification, and notification services.
