The Hindu Business Line : Non-voice mobile application up 139%

RESEARCH and analysts IDC India said that the non-voice market within the mobile telephony segment registered a growth of 139 per cent in 2004 over the previous year.

The biggest contributor continues to be short messaging service accounting for nearly 70 per cent of revenues from non-voice applications.

"The market has grown rapidly due to increasing awareness and acceptance of mobile value added services and applications among subscribers," said Mr Mugdh Rajit, Analyst, Communication Research, IDC (India) Ltd.

At present, non-voice revenue contributes around 4.7 per cent to the total mobile services revenue. Though this is well behind the international standards, it is quickly catching up.

"Traditionally, the thrust of the service providers was on offering only vanilla voice services, but the declining average revenue per user (ARPU) and also the margins on voice calls has made them think of alternate revenue streams with better margins. And, data services seem to be the first choice of all the operators," said an IDC press release.

SMS is the biggest contributor to the overall revenues of non-voice market and is expected to remain so in the near future, IDC said.

MMS services have not yet picked up as expected because of lack of handsets and high cost of service.

"Among other data services, monophonic ring tones are the most popular ones with an annual traffic of over 19 million," said Mr Mugdh.

Polyphonic tunes and other downloads such as wallpapers, logos and games are also fast catching up and are expected to grow much faster once there is more number of compatible handsets available at a lower cost.

Another barrier to the growth of these services has been the high cost of service itself.

However, other data services, such as wallpapers, ring tones and games, are the fastest growing segment in the non-voice space. "This will be one space to watch out for in future.

Though the present size is only around Rs 191 crore it is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 65 per cent to reach Rs 2,302 crore by 2008," IDC said.

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