Dubai: With an increase in marketing initiatives by enterprises, application-to-person (A2P) messaging is a key growth market for mobile network operators and SMS aggregators.
The peer-to-peer or person-to-person messaging is declining but A2P is increasing for organisations such as financial services or ticketing providers because it is one of the safest and most dependable option for communication and has a very high open rate, Medhat Karam, CEO of Arpuplus, a mobile value added services provider in the MENA region, said in a telephone interview with Gulf News.
ALSO READ:
How about some hands-free shopping?
Disrupting the regional music industry
ArpuPlus unveils new regional music distribution portal
Alabbar in joint venture for luxury online portal
“The gradual shift towards online and mobile technology has opened up infinite opportunities for A2P technology, especially in the banking sector, in advertising, and the e-commerce business.
"A recent study has indicated that A2P SMS revenues will touch $50 billion by 2018. The scope is relatively high in the GCC where governments are rapidly transitioning towards ‘smart’ governance,” he said.
Other factors, he said that are driving the market include rapid growth in mobile marketing activities by application developers and marketers and the proliferation in mobile banking, mobile health services, and mobile payments.
On the basis of apps, enterprise A2P SMS market is divided into pushed content services, interactive services, promotional campaigns, customer relationship management service and others (inquiry and search related services).
It is in high demand in several industries — retail, BFSI, travel and transport, health care and hospitality, and entertainment (gaming) and media. The retail and BFSI industries account for a significant share in the A2P SMS market.
“We have developed a platform from one side we connect the enterprises, banks, schools, eCommerce portals to send messages to consumers and on the other side it is connected to the operators, so that I can rely back to the consumers through the operators,” he said.
“Regional enterprises are not communicating with their customers through A2P SMS, so we see a good growth potential for the next four to five years,” he said.
$83b in 2024
According to Transparency Market Research, the global A2P SMS market revenue stood at $57.27 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $83.03 billion by 2024, expanding at an annual growth rate of 4.2 per cent therein. The volume is projected to augment at a 4.1 per cent annual growth rate from 2016 to 2024.
Karam said that A2P SMS has witnessed a robust growth in the last few years, growing at 8.7 per cent annual growth rate, offering lucrative revenue options to enterprising operators who are embracing the service to foray into the new enterprising applications market.
Cairo-based Arpuplus, started in 2003, offers music, entertainment and messaging services on mobile platform to over 500 million reachable subscribers, more than 40 telecom operators, nearly 600,000 content items, and about 200 content providers.
“We are looking to further consolidate our presence in the region by adding value to our partners’ mobile operator base and offering them high-quality SMS-based services. Our expansion plan is to connect to all the operators in the region and expand to Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Algeria,” he said.