Telecom Argentina - does SMS success reflect missed opportunities? PART 2




This is a follow up to my recent post on a Cellular News article about the success of Telecom Argentina has had increasing SMS usage. I stated that this might indicate the need to pay more attention to other messaging services such as MMS, Instant Messaging, Personal Messaging as well as other data services.
From the usage statistics we have from Pyramid Research (March 2008), we can see that SMS revenue for the Argentinean market represents more than 85% of total messaging revenues. While this is expected to change over time, the numbers we have clearly reflect that SMS is still the main source of revenue from messaging.
In early 2007, Telecom Personal launched an initiative to evaluate Mobile Instant Messaging, following Telefonica Movistar's agreement with MSN, which was discussed in this blog (see here).
Telecom Personal went through the process of issuing an RFP and evaluating and selecting a vendor but in the end decided not to launch the service.
I believe that was a missed opportunity and find it somewhat surprsing given Telecom Personal's leadership in the Argentinean market. Even though all three operators share approximately an equal market share, Telecom Personal has consistently led in terms of ARPU and new services.
In the last year, messaging in Latin America has changed significantly, with other operators deploying services such as PC to mobile IM (ANTEL Uruguay) and Personal Messaging (see here for Brazil GSMA initiative). This shows that the Latin American market is busy with new initiatives and opportunities; a leading operator such as Telecom Personal needs to stay on top of this.
Telecom Personal's success with SMS can be a golden opportunity to look into these new services; it is likely, for example, that many users are actually using SMS as Instant Messaging, and providing this service to users can respond to a market need, leveraging an existing successful service while at the same time innovating and expanding their messaging offering.

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