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"2008 is the year worldwide mobile telecoms revenues surpass the Trillion US Dollar industry - a staggering achievement considering the total world economy is worth about 40 Trillion. Only a handful other industries are this giant – one of these is automobiles, total worldwide military spend is another, and tourism is yet another."
Portio Research: “Slicing up the Mobile Services Revenue Pie” – Mar 2008 |
Application developers need to capture the mobile messaging application market if they want to stay ahead in a competitive industry. The worldwide revenue from the wireless telecommunications industry is expected to increase by nearly 20% from the figures of $644 billion in 2007 to $782 billion in 2010. Wireless data is expected make up more than a fifth of this. More people own mobile phones than have access to the internet, experts forecast that the number of mobile phone subscribers will approach 4 billion by the end of the decade. Because of this SMS text messaging is the most effective means of reaching the largest portion of the population. More effective than email and infinitely more effective than mass medium types of advertising.
The UK Mobile Data Services state that, “New devices and an ever growing variety of mobile applications have driven overall growth figures in 2008. SMS (text) growth continues to astound while multi-media messages (MMS - still pictures with text and video clips with sound) shows an increasing level of growth. Consumer awareness, the fact that nearly all phones now come ready configured to work with MMS and attractive tariff bundles from the Mobile Network Operators helps fuel this growth.”
People are increasingly connected through their mobile phones and application to person messages (A2P) including news alerts, ring tones and video clips are popular applications. The uptake of mobile messaging services by banks and large institutions has contributed to this rapid growth.
Mobile message-enabling an application or website creates an opportunity for immediate ‘push’ technology. Mobile messaging is an instantaneous, cost-effective and user-friendly method of communicating with people even when they are not stationed at their PCs or logged into their email servers. System alerts to system administrators, quotation requests to sales teams, notification texts and fraud alerts are invaluable services and because they are based on a mobile platform, they are not limited to a particular location.
The mobile ‘push’ technology of SMS text messaging offers distinct advantages over email systems that requires the end-user to regularly poll the email server for new messages. Mobile messaging enables time-sensitive notifications to be sent and received in real time. And the added bonus of two-way messaging means that responses can be sent and received immediately too.
Top UK and international companies are looking for developers to implement mobile messaging applications for their websites, their social networking sites and mobile phone marketing campaigns. Used in a wide variety of applications from banking to blogging; application developers need to ensure that they can offer their clients mobile messaging solutions.
The growth in mobile phone usage particularly the marked increase in text message sending has defied recent economic events and seems set to still increase further. The mobile platform is increasingly attractive to marketers and big brand companies as a way of retaining and acquiring customers. The focus is on offering services such as text messaging, instant messaging applications and multimedia message services. These provide a fast and reliable way of communicating with customers, receiving feedback and increasing their market exposure and product sales.
The power of mobile messaging can not be ignored by any forward looking company and application developers need to be at the forefront of this technology to best serve their customers.
What does Clickatell offer innovative developers wanting to create mobile messaging applications? |