Telecom Argentina - does SMS success reflect missed opportunities?

Cellular News (link to story here) reports that "... In its third quarter results for 2008 Telecom Argentina’s Personal unit recorded its fourth successive year-on-year increase in quarterly average ARPU – an impressive result in a market which now has a penetration rate of 104%".
As we have mentioned here before, SMS represents for most countries in Latin America up to 90% of data revenue. SMS is a mature product that maintains its status as cash cow, however, the fact that this service is profitable and successful takes attention away from the fact that up until now, operators in Latin America have not been successful with the introduction of new services that effectively contribute to the bottom line.
Recently we talked about how the recent launch of the iPhone in Latin America by Movistar and America Movil is shaping to be a missed opportunity (see here and here) as they are NOT approaching it as an opportunity to increase data usage but rather treating at as just another device, the "flavor" of the month.
Interestingly, it is precisely for this reason that Telecom Personal decided to wait and maybe delay indefinitely its own iPhone launch.
However, even though we applaud their success in continually increasing SMS usage, we also believe there are missed opportunities and that this might actually reflect their lack of a more aggressive and complete data / messaging strategy that can include Instant Messaging, Personal Messaging (GSMA), MMS and Push Mail. We will continue to discuss this topic in future posts.

Comments

  1. Anonymous3:10 PM

    Hi!, I read your post about Telecom Argentina, you are right the data usage (besides SMS) in Latin America is almost null.
    I believe that it is because of two reasons: A) most of the subscribers are prepaid, when you are a prepaid customer you really would like to use your phone at the bare minimum, this is why they send SMS, it is even cheaper than talk and
    B) the Data plan offers in LA are too expensive, difficult to understand and without enough speed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9:03 AM

    Telecom SMS connetivity to other Latin America is almost none and it cannot reach Verizon, Sprint, Nextel in the US (there are missing many subs)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VAS Latin America: hits and misses of 2008

Image
As the year comes to an end, it's a good idea to reflect on the past and learn from our experience, good or bad. With this in mind, I compiled a list of the good, the bad and the really bad news and analysis from the mobile industry in Latin America that I blogged about during 2008, with some additional comments and reflections. Enjoy! The good!!!! America Movil launches the iPhone - after much speculation and anticipation, America Movil formally announced in early May that they were selected to distribute the iPhone in Latin America. America Movil's VAS team moved quickly and successfully launched exactly one year after the iPhone was first launched in the USA by AT&T. Why is this GOOD? This was a complex deployment that was done with a very tight schedule. The successful launch of the iPhone in Latin America was possible thanks to a strong team; Corporate VAS in Mexico, together with local VAS Managers and Operations Managers in the region showed that they have wha
Read more

The time has come, to talk of many things: SMS 2.0, Personal IM and Instant SMS

Image
The time has come for SMS 2.0? In the last three years, we have seen vendors introduce new messaging solutions, all claiming to be the next step in SMS evolution. Presence enabled services have received a lot of attention but have limited traction in the mobile market. IM, by no means a new service, has been one of the most successful services but still far behind the penetration SMS has. SMS reached a mature stage years ago, its growth rate has flattened and it has kept the same form and functionality since it was first introduced. However, it remains one the top revenue generator for mobile operators. So what do you do for an encore? Cellular News published an interesting note on February 2nd: "­Acision has announced that Russian mobile operator, MTS is using its Instant Messaging solution to offer an enhanced messaging experience to its subscribers. Combining the Acision Person to Person Gateway with core elements from Colibria's product portfolio - including the Instant M
Read more