In mid-2005 we published our highly-acclaimed and extremely popular report 'Mobile Messaging Futures 2005-2010'. Following the success of that report, we can now offer you an all-new report 'Mobile Messaging Futures 2007-2012', which offers a complete self-contained analysis of the worlds mobile messaging markets, complete with commentary on the forecasts we made in 2005, including tracking those forecasts against our new forecast data and highlighting what changes have occurred, and why.

Mobile messaging is an integral and vital part of the mobile industry and contributes significantly to worldwide total mobile service revenues. This extensive new Portio Research report offers a complete study of worldwide mobile messaging markets, forecasting SMS and MMS traffic volumes and revenues for the period 2007-2012, and forecasting mobile email and IM user growth for the same period. It provides a detailed analysis and a regional market summary of the mobile markets of Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Africa and Middle East, specifying messaging revenues and volumes in each market and identifying key countries in each region. The report studies the major categories of mobile messaging, i.e., short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), mobile e-mail and mobile instant messaging (IM).

Key features of the report include the following:

• Summary of the worldwide mobile market; comparative summary of the markets in each major geographic region
• Evolution of mobile messaging
• Current and future prospects of the SMS industry, including forecast traffic volumes and service revenues
• Analysis of the MMS market?s strong future prospects
• In-depth analysis of the rapidly growing mobile e-mail and mobile IM services
• Regional market summary and forecasts of SMS and MMS growth, in terms of traffic volumes and revenues

The worldwide population is expected to rise from approximately 6.55 billion to approximately 7 billion between 2006 and 2012, and at the same time we forecast the worldwide mobile subscriber base to also increase from 2.65 billion to 4.81 billion. Asian markets, which are growing at a staggering pace, are expected to account for 50 percent of the total worldwide subscriber base by 2008. Also, the rise in mobile penetration in Latin America and Africa will contribute significantly towards the overall growth of the mobile market.

Although revenues from voice calls still comprise 80 percent of worldwide total mobile revenues, operators globally are focussing on data services for increasing their average revenue per user (ARPU). Of the various data services available, while attracting none of the glamour as a leading product in most MNOs service portfolio's, SMS actually accounts for approximately 75 to 80 percent of non-voice service revenues worldwide.

After a slow start, MMS has also started experiencing significant growth in several regions, especially in North America. Since interoperability agreements were finally put into place in 2005, the North American market has enjoyed rapid growth in MMS traffic. While North America and Europe now enjoy growing MMS traffic and revenues, MMS is still quite weak in much of Asia and other regions, namely Latin America and most of Africa and the Middle East.

Apart from SMS and MMS, mobile e-mail and mobile IM are showing strong future growth prospects in some geographic regions. Apart from North America and Europe, mobile e-mail is expected to grow significantly in the mobile markets of the Asia Pacific region. The success of mobile e-mail is largely driven by the growth of more advanced handheld devices, such as PDAs and smartphones, so obviously growth of these services will be broadly restricted to the wealthier, more advanced markets for the immediate future.

This study takes an in-depth look at worldwide mobile messaging markets, with an aim to offer you the facts and figures to enable operators, content developers, aggregators and handset vendors to identify the key mobile messaging services of the future and the key markets where those services will flourish