A report has forecast that mobile video calling users will exceed 160 million by 2017.
Skype and other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services are already the norm but thanks to data costs, you’re more likely to use Skype with video on your computer than your phone.
But a report by Juniper Research has forecast that the number of users of mobile video calling services would increase four-fold to nearly 160 million by 2017. This would be driven by improvements in both the user interface and the underlying technology, the company said.
The forecast was based on conversations and interviews with companies that offered mobile video calling, or around 12 organisations, report author Anthony Cox said, as well as analysis of financial and business data and an estimation of the growth rate of services, given past take-up trends and using the current estimated amount of smart phones in use. These conversations were often with the chief executive or other board members and the companies were contacted in September and October 2012.
Money money money
While advertising and freemium models were beginning to make an appearance in the mobile video calling market, the potential of both had yet to be explored fully, the report found.
Mr Cox said mobile advertising was becoming main-stream but needed to be adapted for mobile video calling for meaningful revenues to become available to service providers.
However, main companies in the mobile video calling market had received additional funding from backers, despite this.
Mobile VoIP – putting power into consumers’ hands
The report’s white paper said mobile VoIP in general changed the power distribution in the communications industry, placing power in the hands of the consumer or developer, with traditional voice services under pressure from things like the apps available for making VoIP calls.
This meant in the short term, the more established an operator, the more it had to lose from mobile VoIP. Mobile network operators (MNOs) faced competition from new entrants with lower barriers to entry, using mobile internet to transfer mobile calls. MNOS needed to develop new strategies, such as providing a simplified but interesting customer experience, to counter these pressures, the report said.
New entrants into the market themselves faced challenges, from providing a good service that wouldn’t disappoint paying subscribers to differentiating themselves in the market.
The future market
Quality of mobile VoIP offerings had improved “immeasurably” with traditional telcos beginning to offer the service, the report said.
“In some markets, particularly in Asia, nearly all handsets are sold with mVoIP clients, and as LTE arrives, the all-IP environment means that the nature of how voice is carried will change, with circuit switching ceding to the ‘over the top’ mVoIP model.”
The total number of mVoIP subscribers in general was forecast to reach almost 1.1 billion subscribers by 2017, the report found.
