If weapon dealers' businesses flourish during times of war, times of economic crisis seem to be the perfect environment for the growth of worldwide mobile services revenue. Believe it or not, although unemployment has risen throughout the world to dramatic levels, there is a study that says mobile services will never go bankrupt no matter how poor we are.

According to ABI Research, even in the worst recovery scenarios, mobile services will still grow at about 1.2% through 2014. Take North America, for example, where mobile services are said to grow by 8% through 2014 no matter how hard it will be hit by the recession. At least, that's what practice director Dan Shey implies.

“A long economic recovery places pressures on mobile operators to compete on price, particularly with undifferentiated voice services. Mobile data services allow operators to counter that pressure. However each region is different. Operators should create strategies that lead customers to maintain ‘nice-to-have’ data services or encourage addition of more utilitarian ones.”

In order to survive, companies will have to look at a different market than what they are viewing now: prepay. Although a lot of revenue comes from content download, as prices go higher, people's desire to download and pay will lower. By concentrating on messaging and offer management, companies will be able to keep making profit.

Shey added that “Mobile operators need to stress the utility of mobile services and pursue appropriate services personalization initiatives that allow customers to buy and use services in ways that best suit their needs. Business customers should also be a target segment as businesses consider mobile a way to lower costs and increase competitiveness.”

And silly me, here I was thinking that subscriptions would get lower costs. Instead, if ABI Research is right, prepay prices might register an increase in pricing and a diversification of services. Oh well... come 2014, we will see what's what.


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