Anam reckons operators spunking £2.4 billion in lost revenues every year

Got this in from the chaps at Anam Mobile. They’ve spent a lot of time reviewing potential value-added services that could be extended to consumers via text message, a medium everyone is very familiar with (e.g. banking or the like).

Here’s more from Anam:

Anam Mobile today revealed that global mobile operators are losing out on as much as €3.6billion (£2.4billion) of revenue per year through lost opportunities to create value-added SMS messages. Anam’s review considers how operators can increase the average value of each text message sent across their networks.

Text messaging has grown into a phenomenally popular form of communication, with research from the telecoms analyst company Informa Telecoms & Media revealing that over 600 billion messages were sent worldwide during the first quarter of this year – over 75 messages for every mobile subscriber. Yet many operators are focussing on other, less well-established, data applications as they aim to increase ARPU and profitability.

By introducing new data services through SMS, operators can tap into the existing level of comfort that consumers already feel when using the short, 160 character format. This approach will make it easier for new services to be adopted and can attach real value to the messages that individuals already send.

‘After voice, text messaging is still the most popular application on mobiles,” said Dan Winterbottom, Senior Analyst, Mobile Content & Applications at Informa Telecoms & Media. ‘Yet when it comes to innovation and new services, text messaging is being ignored by many operators in favour of new data services. There is an innate understanding by subscribers of how texting works, this could be utilised by operators when they introduce new services.”

Irrespective of the exact figure, what’s pretty clear to me is there are substantial, substantial revenue possibilities being missed by operators. It doesn’t have to be a new whizzy downloadable game that doesn’t work on many handsets, Mr Operator! Don’t forget the medium of text offers massive possibilities.