Market Forecasts

The LEAP Manifesto is not a business plan, and our concern is not the making of business profit. Instead, throughout the series of articles that make up the manifesto, we are concerned with what is required to create and build a healthy and vigorous Mobile Messaging industry, that will bring the greatest benefits to the industry participants and to the consumer. For this reason, quantitative market forecasts are not of any great relevance.

For those interested in such matters, however, we can say that the market for Mobile Messaging is extremely large. Market surveys repeatedly show that electronic messaging is the dominant application for both local area networks and wide area networks. Intranet operators and Service Providers repeatedly cite e-mail as the number one user requirement. Similarly, in the wireless arena, there is general consensus that Mobile Messaging is the primary application for wide area wireless data networks.

With regard to the actual size of the market: nobody knows. The Mobile Messaging industry is extremely complex, from both a technological and a business standpoint, and any market projection is at best an order-of-magnitude estimate based on a particular set of assumptions. Nevertheless, there is certainly no shortage of market projections, and all agree that the forecast for growth of wireless data and mobile messaging is phenomenal. In the following paragraphs we provide a few example data points.

Figure shows the projections of the Yankee Group for the growth in numbers of wireless and mobile data subscribers. In this figure, the thin (lower) line represents the current thinking of the Yankee Group. The thick (upper) line represents their better case forecast scenario.

Figure 1: Wireless Mobile Data Subscribers

In their 1998 study, the Yankee Group estimated that in 1999 there were already almost 7 million wireless and mobile data subscribers. They forecast that by the year 2002 this number would increase to over 21 million subscribers, using numerous independent networks. Every one of those subscribers is likely to use Mobile Messaging in some form. The Yankee Group also forecast that sales of two-way pagers will reach 5 million in 2000, 24 million in 2001, and 54 million in 2003.

A recent study by Killen & Associates estimates that the North American market alone for carrier services, equipment and software for wireless internet applications will jump from $2.7 billion in 1999 to $37.5 billion by 2002. They estimate that the global revenue for wireless access to the Internet and Intranet centered services, equipment and software will jump from $2.2 billion in 1999 to $10.0 billion by 2002.

Figure shows the projections of Killen & Associates for the growth of global revenue for wireless access to the Internet and Intranet centered services, equipment and software.

Figure 2: Global Wireless Internet Revenues

Whichever set of numbers you choose to believe, it is clear that the Mobile Messaging industry is destined for a spectacular future. The consequences of widespread wireless data communications capability are going to be enormous, in technological, cultural, and economic terms.