The number of mobile video calling service users will increase four-fold to nearly 160 million by 2017, driven by technology and user interface improvements, according to a new survey.
Advertising and freemium models are starting to emerge in the mobile video calling market but revenue generation remains the key challenge for mobile video calling players, the study by Juniper Research found.
Associate analyst Anthony Cox commented in the report: “Mobile advertising per se is becoming mainstream but the model still needs to be adapted for mobile video calling for meaningful revenues to become available to service providers.”
The report has found that specialist mobile VoIP companies are opening their Application Programming Interfaces to third parties such as MNOs to gain revenues, and that 4G will aid mobile VoIP take-up but potentially accelerate the decline in overall voice revenues for MNOs.
In addition, advanced IP-based services will develop faster in developed markets, due to the direct correlation between 3G and 4G roll-outs and the take-up of mobile VoIP and mobile video calling (such as the use of Apple’s FaceTime), while revenues from the circuit switched voice market will continue to fall over the next five years but will not accelerate.
WebRTC might be one way that operators could look to unlock the potential of increased mobile video calling.
Although the technology is still in its infancy, WebRTC enables users to be able to communicate via a real-time multimedia communications platform that is embedded into a webpage.
John Logsdon, CEO and founder of NetDev, told European Communications: “[Operators] cannot afford to simply ignore WebRTC. By taking a ‘mobile first’ angle they have the opportunity to tie into the increasingly mobile needs of both the business and consumer customer.”