There was a lot of press made the other day about how Steve Jobs had wanted to totally bypass the carriers and build his own wireless network and while that is extremely hard to do these days that doesn’t mean that the “phone networks” we are use to will survive into the future.
In fact a study by mobile(SQUARED) has found that operators are finding that messaging, voice and video apps are going to greatly affect their business where they could see a drop of 11% to 20% over the next 5 to 10 years. This shift to non-number based communication is strong enough that some operators see those numbers being closer to 31% to 40%.
Gavin Patterson, the mobile(SQUARED) analysts said this when it came to the future decline in a carrier’s service.
The mobile landscape is changing as users embrace messaging of all kinds that enable them to seamlessly message a multitude of devices. This study confirms that lucrative messaging revenues are already impacted and operators are assessing ways to deliver core-network services in the all-IP environment. Rich Communication Ecosystem (RCE) applications are one example of how mobile operators can overcome the hurdles they face.
via The Next Web
There are some that are even more pessimistic about the situation as Drew Olanoff from The Next Web found out when he talked to Enflick co-founder Derek Ting.
Some people believe that phone numbers are a thing of the past. Yesterday, I spoke with Enflick‘s Co-Founder Derek Ting, creator of popular messaging apps TextNow and PingChat. He thinks numbers are dead in the water:
Everyone has a smart phone, 5-10 years from now, we’re going to a numberless world.
Times are definitely changing folks and nowhere is this more obvious that with our communication platforms.