Author Archive
by Chetan Sharma
August 22, 2007 at 9:33 am · Filed under Studies + Research
Last week we released some numbers on the US wireless market from 1H07. US wireless data market continued its impressive growth reaching $5.85B in service revenues for the quarter. Data and Voice ARPU increased 8% and 1% Quarter/Quarter (Q/Q) respectively.
Overall ARPU increased by $1.05 Q/Q to $53.62 due to strong data performance and stable voice ARPU. The untold story has been the surprising resiliency of Voice ARPU over the past 3 quarters. Data ARPU grew 8% from Q107 and 19% from Q406 to $9.04. As estimated in our Q107 update, Verizon overtook Sprint in data ARPU with a 13% increase from its Q107 numbers to $9.84 while Sprint’s data ARPU increased only by 5% to $9.75. AT&T’s data ARPU increased by 11% to $8.77 and T-Mobile’s 4% jump accounted for its $7.8 data ARPU for Q207.
The strongest growth continues to come from Verizon, accounting for almost 31% of industry’s data revenue in Q207. Its data service revenues jumped by 13% Q/Q to $1.8B. Verizon was followed by AT&T at $1.65B, Sprint at $1.2B, and T-Mobile at $613M.
Non-messaging data revenues continue to be in the 50-60% range for the US carriers. T-Mobile recorded $644M or 53% of its data revenues from non-messaging applications and services during 1H07.
Verizon recorded 10B TXT messages in June setting a record of messaging volume at a single carrier. For the quarter 28.3B TXT messages were sent on its network. AT&T recorded 18B TXT messages for the quarter.
GSM Association announced the 200 millionth 3G mobile subscription. As estimated in our widely referenced 2005 paper on 3G, 2007 is proving to be the inflection year for many western nations including the US where the penetration crossed 15% in Q2.
The worldwide markets continue to grow at an explosive pace reaching 3B subscriptions by Q207 up 13% from 2006 levels. Significant growth is coming from India and China with both countries registering close to 7M net adds on average in Q2. India recorded 7.34M net adds (its highest) in June. In Q3, China will cross the amazing 500M subscriptions mark which is more than the next two big markets (US and India) combined. India will cross the 200M mark in Q3 and will cross US in 2008. US will cross 250M by Q4. Overall, the world market is almost at 50% penetration.
More here.
by Chetan Sharma
August 14, 2007 at 12:43 pm · Filed under SMS, Usage + Usability
The perennial Starbucks example has been long talked about w.r.t. Mobile Advertising - you are passing by and are zapped by the coffee coupon. While we wait for that scenario to come to fruition, there are some entrepreneurs who are doing some clever things with location. One of them is NearbyNow. Using user declaration (I am at this mall) and SMS, they have created a nationwide network that connects malls and users with ongoing sales. User’s text in a code to NEARBY and get back things on sale for a particular category “shoes” or “Nike air Jordan” etc. A second SMS might be “15% on shoes at macy’s”. Very clever. It is working well and providing invaluable analytics to the retailers.
by Chetan Sharma
July 26, 2007 at 11:58 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0
Vint Cerf is a legend in the industry. Widely known as a “Father of the Internet,” Vint is the co-designer with Robert Kahn of TCP/IP protocols and basic architecture of the Internet. Google Kirkland hosted an evening with him and as expected it was a packed house. Of course, the fine dining experience was part of the deal.
The topic of the talk was “Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century”
It is always inspiring to hear the best minds speak, especially someone having such a deep historical perspective as Vint. The full-house was glued to their seats as he took us on a journey from the starting point of creating a network and a protocol that will form the backbone of the what we know today as the Internet and then ended the talk with an update on his work on Interplanetary Internet.
However, what was fascinating was he started his presentation with the “potential” of mobile as an access means. He referred phones as programmable devices and Information appliances rather than mobile phones. His strong emphasis on mobile esp in the developing world gives insights into the reason (and it is quite obvious) for all the recent activity at Google w.r.t. mobile. Mobile as a commerce and payment device where people can exchange minutes (as currency) and buy goods, complete transactions offers a great opportunity esp. if geo-location services are involved.
He complained about the inability of US to provide symmetric broadband services to its masses while other countries are zipping it by in terms of penetration and broadband availability. He didn’t think streaming video is going to be a big issue in the future (though it consumes 36% of the HTTP traffic (which consumes 45% of the Internet traffic) as people will just download the file instead of streaming with multi-gig network pipes.
He also talked about the democratization of content where people can contribute a single word to wikipedia or a whole page to a blog and as such the barriers to participation have dropped down to zero.
Then, he got into Interplanetary Internet, something you don’t hear everyday. But, the experiences, and the technical decisions made were quite fascinating. The Delay Tolerant Networking protocol they developed for communicating with various nodes in the solar system also got adopted by the DOD and is currently in use in Iraq. And, the application it is being used for is Chat.
He was quite funny and thoughtful with life full of experiences and achievements.
At the end of the talk, I asked him - “You talked about the potential for mobile but given that the current state of closed gardens unlike the evolution of the Internet, how do you see the potential being realized?” Of course this was in reference to the all the 700MHz discussion that is consuming the industry right now. It is a pivotal moment in the industry and the consequences could be enormous.
He gave a pretty thoughtful response and this coming from a guy who spent several years in the telecom world (yes, he is with Google right now but he is very genuine and Carriers should talk to him to take history lessons)
“Our industry needs to realize that their new business models that will evolve that will benefit everyone in the ecosystem, if we are more open, have more open platforms, open networks, open devices. We are participating in the 700MHz debate and we are trying to persuade people that by opening the network, new opportunities will emerge. The current state of affairs is of course closed gardens. The alternate route is when more devices use alternate networks and more smart devices are introduced. I was kind of disappointed by iPhone, they could have done so much by opening up the device”
Overall, a great evening and I was fortunate to participate in the discussion.
by Chetan Sharma
July 26, 2007 at 11:56 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0
Sprint Nextel announced Thursday that it would develop with Google a new mobile Internet portal using WiMax wireless technology to offer Web search and social networking. The services will include detection of location combined with Google tools including email, chat, and other applications.
Cracks have started to widen.
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by Chetan Sharma
June 19, 2007 at 7:01 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, User Interface
In the US, one state after another is banning not only talking while driving but also messaging while driving (the latter can of course be deadlier of the two). So, how can one keep chatting away. Enter TravellingWave. With some sophisticated voice-entry technology, it is like Tegic for your voice. Helps dictate your message quickly and accurately. How soon something like this will be in the phones? Hard to tell but speech is becoming a way to interact with applications already, it won’t be long before messaging is also included in the mix.
Disclaimer. I am advisor to the CEO of TravellingWave.
by Chetan Sharma
June 2, 2007 at 9:17 am · Filed under News, SMS, Studies + Research
Telephia released its numbers on the off-portal US market - content purchased via premium SMS (PSMS) from off-portal storefronts as well as PSMS servics like voting/sweepstakes and chat. Premium SMS revenues totaled more than $273 million, making up 32 percent of mobile content revenue in Q1 2007. Download purchases paid for via premium SMS (at off-portal storefronts) totaled nearly $215 million, accounting for 79 percent of premium SMS revenue.
These off-portal storefront purchases include content such as ringtones and horoscopes. Voting/sweepstakes entries generated more than $35 million. While voting/sweepstakes entries generated only 13 percent of total revenues for premium SMS transactions, they represented 47 percent of premium SMS volume, equaling more than 34 million transactions.
Table 1: Premium SMS Transaction Volume and Revenue Share (U.S.)
Category Type Volume # of Revenue Total Q1
Share Transactions Share 2007 Revenue
(%) (000) (%)
—————————————————————-
Off-portal Storefront
Purchases 40% 29,544 79% $214.9M
Voting/Sweepstakes
Entries 47% 34,716 13% $35.4M
Other* 6% 4,208 6% $17.4M
Chat/Community 7% 5,497 2% $5.7M
Source: Telephia Premium SMS Report and Telephia Attitudes and Behavior Survey, Q1 2007
by Chetan Sharma
May 24, 2007 at 11:13 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, News, SMS
American Idol was a game changer in the US as far as mobile marketing is concerned. Last night 74M text’d in.
The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) today published a draft Code of Practice (Code) outlining best practices for Participation Television (P-TV) in the United States. P-TV services typically provide viewers the ability to interact with television shows – for example, where viewers are asked to text in votes or enter sweepstakes using their mobile phones. Often these shows integrate enhanced content with premium rate mobile services. P-TV is expected to experience continuing fast growth in coming months.
Had a chance ealier today to talk to Edward Boddington, MEF Americas Board member and Telescope, Inc. Founder. Boddington helped develop ‘Pop Idol’ in the UK, which became ‘American Idol’ in the U.S. (he handed the envelope to Ryan Seacrest last night on ‘American Idol’ announcing Jordin Sparks as the new American Idol).
Some numbers from Ed. $300M P-TV in UK, 30% of it is mobile messaging. In the US, the numbers are in the range of $30-50M though accurate estimates are not available. The final version of the code will be available at www.m-e-f.org within 2-3 months. Thanks to Chris Pfaff for arranging the interview.
by Chetan Sharma
May 22, 2007 at 6:51 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0
Within a month, the most talked about phone in the industry is going to descend on us. AT&T is shedding its Cingular skin to synchronize with the iPhone buzz. One of the most anticipated features is of course the touch screen and the user experience that comes with it.
(Source: Apple)
Most of us are used to texting using touchpads or qwerty keyboards, will the experience suffer or slow down as a result of a virtual keyboard? The IM like feature for SMS is going to be a hit, having the context to your messages helps. It remains to be seen if AT&T will work with other OEMs to roll-out such feature for other devices as well. Apple-AT&T bond does turn the ecosystem on its head and hopefully, it will lead to more cooperation that eventually benefits the user.
by Chetan Sharma
May 17, 2007 at 7:33 pm · Filed under Mobile Tech, Mobile messaging 2.0, Platforms, SMS
As seen in latest numbers, mobile messaging is catching up in the US. The top 3 carriers in terms of messaging volume - Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T did over 53B messages (SMS and MMS combined but majority was SMS) last quarter. Verizon alone handled 22.75B. Since penetration is just around 40%, the growth will continue. As new customers come online and begin using mobile messaging, the experience needs to integrate across different forms of messaging - SMS, MMS, Email, IM. The integration needs to be at the technical level and the business level. The pricing structure shouldn’t be cost prohibitve to the user to suppress usage. Technically, interoperability is still an issue with MMS. Realiability needs to improve tremendously. If we are going to be using SMS as part of our emergency infrastructure, best-effort doesn’t cut it. Timely and guaranteed delivery needs to be part of the course.
