Don't Believe The Hype, Yo

If you're a regular listener of the Podcast (shameless plug: you can download the podcast to your right) you've heard me rant and rave about all the hype in the mobile industry around new "killer apps" like video. Well it appears that I'm right. People don't give a crap about watching tv on their cell phones. Except for a handful of tech geeks and business guys no one wants to pay between $20 - $50 per month for high speed data services. Nor do they want to pay another $1.99 - $5 per download.

SMS is and will continue to be the killer application in the US. How do I know? Well, take a look at the UK. They are about 5 years ahead of the US in technology and mobile phone adoption. And what technology do you think they use? I'll give you one guess....text messaging. Text messaging is easy, its fun and you can communicate a quick message to someone instantaneously. The key word being communication. People just want to use phones to communicate with one another. Not to browse user generated content or telvision shows.

Here's a study published by Fierce Wireless today (Sweet Vindication):

Metric: SMS contributes 75% of non-voice ARPU

According to a report from Research and Markets, revenues from voice calls still make up 80 percent of worldwide total mobile revenues, but of the non-voice service revenues, SMS accounts for between 75 percent and 80 percent of that ARPU. The report also predicted that by 2012 the worldwide mobile subscriber base will increase from 2.65 billion to 4.81 billion. The report also claimed that by 2008, Asian markets will account for 50 percent of the worldwide subscriber base.