Mobile handsets are evolving quickly and the way people use them is changing just as fast.. According to the report titled, Consumer smartphone usage: voice and messaging trends,? more than 45 per cent of customers with a smartphone use some form of instant messaging (IM) or over-the-top (OTT) messaging application in addition to (and in some cases instead of) traditional text messaging (SMS).
The report is based on data derived from Arbitron Mobile passive on-device monitoring application, which monitored more than 1000 smartphone users in France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
As per the report, WhatsApp Messenger is the first large-scale cross-platform messaging application, nearly 20 per cent of the panellists used it during the two-month observation period. However, OTT communication applications have succeeded in replacing operator services in only a small proportion of cases, only 1.7 per cent of the panel used IM/OTT messaging without using SMS, but 97 per cent of panellists used SMS.
The relative fragmentation of the messaging market (compared to, for example, Skype dominance of the VoIP market) will continue to hinder full substitution. However, while the messaging market is fragmented, the collective effect is having an impact on SMS usage; the number of text messages sent per active user is already declining in some Western countries.
Skype continues to dominate the VoIP market; 79 per cent of VoIP users on the panel used the service (16 per cent of all panellists), making it the default VoIP provider. The main challengers to Skype are Viber, fring and Google Talk, as used by 5 per cent, 0.8 per cent and 0.6 per cent of panellists respectively.
Alarmingly for operators, some smartphone users are beginning to use VoIP apps as their primary voice service; approximately 20 per cent of VoIP users (or 4 per cent of the panellists) used mobile VoIP more than traditional voice services.
As more people use VoIP as their primary voice service, the danger for mobile operators is that they become relegated to providing secondary voice services, picking up the 30 per cent or 40 per cent of call traffic generated by users when contacting people who are outside their core calling circle. If this occurs widely, operators? roles will be marginalised.
Again based on a country-by-country comparison, the price of mobile operators? core services will affect the rate of adoption of OTT services. For example, the historically high cost of SMS and voice services in Spain has stimulated consumers to use OTT messaging and mobile VoIP services to a much higher extent than in other countries. A third of panellists in Spain used mobile VoIP and 80 per cent used IM or OTT messaging.
Mobile VoIP services were much more popular among men (21 per cent) than women (16 per cent). However, this is the only communciations platform that is more popular with males than females ? social networking applications were used by 8 per cent more women than men, email was used by 4 per cent more women and 2 per cent more women made voice calls.
Mobile VoIP applications have universal appeal, whereas other applications, such as Facebook or WhatsApp Messenger, do not. The percentage of those who use mobile VoIP apps only varied by 3 percentage points across every age category primarily because voice is an established medium, and Skype is recognised as an inter-generational communications medium on the desktop PC. By contrast, more than 80 per cent of smartphone users aged from 18 to 24 used the Facebook mobile application, compared with 51 per cent of those aged 45 or over. The trend is similar for WhatsApp Messenger ? most of its users are aged under 35.
