Business VoIP Featured Article

2019 VoIP Market Forecast Looks at Mobile Future

April 13, 2015

By Joe Rizzo, Contributing Writer

As we watch Voice over IP (VoIP) technologies continue to mature and evolve, the result is that the global VoIP services market will also grow at a substantial rate. Several research firms forecast that the market will triple in size over the next four years, as each day more companies are taking advantage of what VoIP has to offer.


Mobile operators are already beginning to feel some heat from companies that are offering VoIP services. Over the past few months we have seen that companies, such as Google and WhatsApp are working on offering various VoIP options. It is this kind of thinking that has led many companies to develop mobile VoIP (mVoIP) apps to their offerings.

Business intelligence company Visiongain, released a report designed to take a look at the future of mVoIP, entitled “Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Market Forecast 2014-2019: Prospects for Mobile (mVoIP) vs. Static VoIP.”

It seems that while the consideration for mVoIP is based on subscription level, static VoIP providers have had more steady growth and are expected to make up about 96 percent of the growth of the VoIP. This might have something to do with the fact that we are seeing over-the-top (OTT) services, such as Skype and WhatsApp making carriers nervous, they currently have a strong lead and would like to hold on to it.

According to a Visiongain spokesperson, “Since 2011, the VoIP market has changed drastically due to the introduction of highly innovative and effective mVoIP applications. Thanks to these, the global VoIP market has seen a radical increase in the number of subscriptions, especially since 2011 when various applications were commercially launched in the APAC region.”

Is this something that carriers have to worry about? If I understand the report correctly, the answer to that question would be yes. At some point in the near future, carriers will have to face the reality of what OTT providers are offering and will have to compete directly with them.

Will these OTT providers be able to turn subscription numbers into revenue? If so, will it take revenue away from the carriers? One thing that a lot of operators noticed with WhatsApp’s popularity was a decline in Short Message Service (SMS) traffic. What the operators fear now is that these types of services will have a similar effect on voice services. With an estimated growth rate that will take WhatsApp to around the 1.1 billion users mark this year, you can see why operators are concerned. All of these thoughts and findings lead to the question: what will the future of the VoIP market hold? 




Edited by Maurice Nagle

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