The first month of 2022 is over and February is firmly in sight (forgetful people this is your reminder to order a Valentine’s Day gift if you’re celebrating) but don’t drop January in the gutter just yet. The GMS team has pulled together a list of the most interesting and important news stories in the messaging and telecoms world for you, summarised below.
2021 — an excellent year for Viber
Our long-time partners and friends over at Viber had an excellent year in 2021 and shared some interesting stats via a webinar recently.
- An incredible +55% new Viber Business Messaging accounts opened
- They also saw +20% delivered business messages
- The top growing countries for Viber Business Messaging were: Philippines +112%, Greece +82%, Bulgaria +71%, Serbia +66%, Belarus +41%
MEF 2022 Predictions
Every year MEF (the Mobile Ecosystem Forum) publishes a set of predictions on where they see the next year going. This year was no different and they shared some really interesting thoughts, here’s a few we thought would be the most relevant to our readers:
Cybercrime & Fraud — with the world undergoing a massive digital transformation during the early stages of the pandemic (as much as 5 years change in 2020 alone) we are now seeing cyber fraud emerging as the most common method of fraud. By 2025 it’s estimated that cyber fraud will be worth $10.5 trillion.
A stay of execution for cookies — Google has announced that cookies will still be tracked by Chrome into 2023, so does that mean that 2022 will be business as usual for marketers? Not really. While the cookie is still here, many marketers are turning to messaging and customer data to build successful campaigns.
Mobile operators looking to new models — a big shift is happening in the operator space. With revenues for some services on the decline, MNOs are looking to new revenue streams, such as CPaaS solutions.
Smartphone usage climbs to 5 hours a day on average
ZDNet recently published an article covering the continued growth in daily average screen time for smartphone users, as reported in App Annie’s annual survey for 2021. The average screen time pre-pandemic was around 3 hours, but two years later we’ve seen an unprecedented rise to 5. Mobile is now the destination for a huge majority of users across all age demographics, which is something we’ve not really seen in the past. Now everyone from Gen Z up to Baby Boomers are spending increased time with their devices.
But what does this mean for you? Well SMS and mobile messaging platforms have always been a great channel for marketing, but now with people spending more time on their phones than ever the opportunities for savvy marketers are only increasing.
New SMS guidance from the UK
The British government’s National Cyber Security Centre has published new guidelines for businesses on how we can all do our part to help reduce cybercrime and fraud. The NCSC has developed these new guidelines to hopefully help curb the abuse of telephony and messaging systems by fraudsters, something that they have seen rise more than anticipated over the past two years. They have even partnered with our above-mentioned friends at MEF to help fund the SenderID Registry, aiming to reduce smishing and spoofing through cross-industry collaboration.
If you’re sending business messages in the UK, then it’s definitely a worthwhile read, helping to ensure your messages are delivered successfully.
CPaaS predicted to reach record revenues
Industry experts Juniper Research have recently released studies into the CPaaS market, predicting it to skyrocket to a value of $15b in the US by 2026. This would be a big change from $3.7b in 2021, a 305% increase in fact. While these figures are focused on the US, worldwide growth is also expected worldwide. The US is predicted to be roughly 45% of the market in 2026, so if you expand that prediction to cover the whole market, you will see a predicted revenue of more than $33b.
Juniper also predicts that Asia Pacific will be an area that sees particularly strong growth. In 2021, the CPaaS market there was worth $2.2b but they’re predicting it will be over $9b in just five years.