A new report from Aite Group, LLC gauges mobile operators' current perceptions of mobile transactions. The report, which is based on an October 2007 survey of 12 international mobile operators, provides insight into how mobile operators view mobile transaction adoption and how they perceive payments will be made for various mobile transaction services.
As voice revenues continue to decline for operators, a steady uptick in simple services such as text messaging provide hope that users will gradually begin to utilize hand-held devices for purposes other than that which they were originally intended. They envision that by the end of 2009, 25.5% of users will use the devices for mobile banking, 26.9% will use them for the addition of prepaid minutes, and 26.3% will use them for mobile commerce. With the majority of payments being diverted to phone bills at the end of 2007, mobile operators stand to gain tremendously as mobile transactions continue to increase.
"Mobile operators clearly have a high opinion of themselves when it comes to the role they believe they will play in the future of mobile transactions," says Nick Holland, senior analyst with Aite Group and author of this report. "Though they may lose out in some areas, such as payment share for mobile commerce, new technologies like mobile POS payments may lead to a very bright future for the intersection of mobile devices and payments."
This 23-page Impact Report contains 15 Figures.