Research company IDC says the revenue that mobile operators receive from SMS text messages will soon no longer be the largest part of their non-voice revenue… but only in the Asia/Pacific region. Its latest report expects mobile multimedia services to make up 11% of total mobile service revenue in the 'Asia/Pacific excluding Japan' (APEJ) region by the end of 2009, putting it slightly ahead of the contribution from SMS revenue for the first time ever. Last year the APEJ region saw 10.3% of revenue coming from SMS and 10.1% from mobile multimedia services.
IDC predicts that the SMS contribution to revenue will remain at around 10% for the next few years, while mobile multimedia services will keep growing. [Press release]