LATAM Telecom

Subscriber usage behavior clearly shows that the Latin American market is ready for a solution such as GSMA Personal IM, also known as SMS 2.0 (Telefonica Spain, Acision) or Instant SMS (Comverse). The chart above measures three elements: Data ARPU (x), mobile penetration (y) and average number of SMS messages per user per month for several Latin American countries (1) . The countries with SMS usage in the region are Venezuela, Argentina and Ecuador; with Colombia having the lowest SMS usage. These countries also have a higher data ARPU; this is not surprising as in Latin America 70% to 90% of data revenue comes from SMS. What's relevant here is subscriber SMS usage, surpassing 100 messages per user per month as in the case of Venezuela and more recently Argentina; this tells us that heavy users are actually having live conversations using SMS; in other words, a segment of subscribers uses SMS as Instant Messaging, with a higher number of messages going back and forth per conversa...

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...

Comverse at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was selected as a finalist for the 2008 GSMA Global Mobile Award in the Best Mobile Messaging Service category. They showed us not only their iPhone Visual VoiceMail but also other demos for different types of handsets for non iPhone operators and segments. This is probably the single most important breaktrhough innovation in VoiceMail since it was launched. Interestingly, the breakthrough came form an outsider, breaking all the rules to which both operators and handset vendors had played for years. As we have reported here before, there are strong rumors that Telcel Mexico and Claro Brazil are next in line to launch the iPhone. Given the size of the market and the dominance of both operators, it's a non brainer Apple might want to partner with them. The question is, will Venezuela and Argentina also be considered, given the size and importance of both markets. Venezuela, for example, is expected to be similar in size as Brazil for mes...

Yesterday we posted about Ovum's particpation at Barcelona GSMA and Forrester's Tecnographics Webinar , both focusing on new revenue opportunities for mobile operators: Mobile Advertising (Ovum) and Gen Y's use of interactive media (Forrester Technographics). Pyramid today published a new report titled "Social Networking Goes Mobile", (from the report excerpt) ; this report "assesses the current and future state of mobile social networking, whereby members access their favorite sites using their mobile devices." Both mobile advertising and mobile social networking represent opportunities for operators to introduce new exciting services and increase revenues. A key factor, however, is whether the on line world will enter the mobile arena or whether mobile operators will enter the on line arena, in other words, who will control introduction of new services? Past experience with similar services such Mobile Instant Messaging have shown that operators stand...

From UNSTRUNG NEWS ANALYSIS, René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG is quoted stating that even though Europe is not selling as many iPhones as AT&T, the iPhone is helping to drive up mobile data use ( iPhone Data Booms at T-Mobile ). This is interesting news for operators in Latin America interested in launching the iPhone. The unique situation of the US market sometimes makes it difficult to undertand how a certain product, service or strategy might work if launched in Latin America, so looking at European markets, who have alos high prepaid subscribers and similar pricing plans, helps a lot. In Latin America, mobile demand continues to grow (it is expected to surpass 500M subscribers by 2010, according to Pyramid Research) but voice ARPU has been falling for the last five years. Operators are looking at data to offset this fall and the iPhone hype seems to fit in nicely with this strategy. Interestingly, this was also named as a challenge to European operators by the UNSTRUNG...

Brough's COMMUNICATIONS Blog from 12/08/2007 talks about Ringback Tones Adoption Rates , a service that has been very successful in Asia as a money maker and music distribution channel: Nearly 55% of Korean subscribers have ringback tone service; China Mobile has close to 50% adoption. In contrast, adoption rates in Europe were below 10%; the US has ~12M subscribers or 5%. What about Latin America? Based on our experience with operators in the region, the best cases have about 2% service penetration. Brough pays special attention to the fact that operators in Korea and China have more than 20 content providers just for this service. In contrast, the typical operator in the US or EU is usually the only source of information or content. In Latin America, with the exception of some early adopters like Movistar Chile , most operators launched the service during 2006. For the most part, penetration has been low and the uptake slow, even the most successful cases like Millicom Colombia ...

From Cellular News and other news sources, we find out that Microsoft has started placing advertisements on the U.S. version of MSN Mobile. Microsoft already serves up mobile ads in Japan and some European markets. Competitor Yahoo began selling cell phone ads phones in the U.S. in late 2006 and expanded overseas in February (source: Cellular News ). What about Latin America? Microsoft introduced MSN Mobile in the Latin American market in 2006, with Brazil leading the way ( source ), as well as Movistar Chile and Argentina, with the launch of MSN Mobile ( source ). While this service is available in most of the region, it is a WAP based service that can be cumbersome. There are no available statistics that we know of for the penetration of this service, but we expect them to be very low. The deployment of 3G networks in the region can probably help operators provide a better user experience for this service, although given the limitations presented by a mostly prepaid customer base (~...