According to a report issued by Portio Research, SMS messaging still leads the revenues from non-voice mobile, representing 60 percent of the income, which was worth about $179.2 billion in 2010.
This was the fifth edition of the report entitled Mobile Messaging Futures 2011-2015, and it forecasted that by the completion of 2011, the mobile market will have passed $200 billion, that in 2014 it will break the $300 billion mark, and that the end of 2015 will mean $334.7 billion.
The research published within the report also described the continuing success of SMS messaging, which was responsible for over 60 percent of the overall mobile market revenue, at $114.6 billion in 2010. In that year, the global SMS traffic increased to over 6.9 trillion, and by the end of this year, it is predicted that it will reach beyond 8 trillion.
That said, the report also predicts that after the end of this year, SMS growth will begin to slow as a result of the changing mobile industry dynamics.
Other services that are beginning to take a serious hold and gain ground among mobile device users include instant messaging (IM) and email. As smartphone use is skyrocketing, as is the adoption of more high-speed internet access-capable networks, and the availability of more affordable data plans, consumers are beginning to make the mobile email user base a much larger one.
By 2010’s close, there were approximately 480.6 million mobile email service users around the world. By 2015, though, the report estimates that this number will have quadrupled.