ABI says SMS is being increasingly regarded as something of a commodity by users, due to falling delivery costs and high competition. 

Industry analyst Aapo Markkanen says, "When these trends towards commoditization are combined with the wider adoption of mobile email and IM services, the revenue proportion of SMS and MMS against the market total is expected to decline."

Markkanen adds that email has the advantage of familiarity for many consumers, and that "Due to relatively low PC penetration in emerging regions, for many consumers across Latin America, Africa, and south Asia mobile devices will provide the primary screen for accessing email. This won’t be restricted to smartphones: many companies are developing solutions to allow more basic handsets to handle email."

ABI notes that the rate of mobile phone adoption will gradually decline over the next five years, and growth in number of new customers starting to use messaging will slow along with it. The firm also points out that SMS messaging is more prevalent among younger mobile subscribers and use of this channel will get a further boost from the younger subscribers replacing ones.

ABI says it believes that the future of mobile messaging will increasingly be in "unified toolkits that mash up and converge text and multimedia messages, IM chats, emails and voicemails." Facebook’s recently announced social inbox certainly comes to mind.

You can find ABI’s study here. 

“It’s still early days and there’s no single ‘right’ approach to location-based advertising,” says practice director Neil Strother. “This remains a very fragmented market that is full of experimentation.”

Location-based ads are enabled by three sets of technologies: GPS, Wi-Fi, and Cell-ID (location determined relative to mobile phone transmitters.) The most successful campaigns, according to ABI, use a mix of some or all of these, depending on the product or service, the region, the consumers, and the location accuracy required.

New location-based services are springing up, catering to mobile shoppers. Some are “check-in” services such as Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, and Facebook with its Places, for consumers who are willing to “self-identify.” Others, such as Shopkick, use an iPhone app to reward shoppers just for visiting certain stores.

“Some might be put off by the ‘Big Brother’ aspects of this,” says Strother, “but it’s really about the value-exchange: if you care about getting discounts or being rewarded for shopping, is the value-exchange high enough so that you’ll accept having your whereabouts known to these companies in return for the benefits?”
 

"Mobile browsers are evolving along two paths," says ABI Research senior analyst Mark Beccue. "On one hand, highly sophisticated browsers, which we are calling full Internet browsers, will be found in all smartphones and a growing number of enhanced (or feature) phones. Such devices can host these browsers because they have advanced application processors, expanded memory capacity and adequate screen size and resolution. These full Internet browsers typically require about 64 Mb of memory to run. A real key to the growth of full Internet browsers in higher-end feature phones is the falling cost of sophisticated applications processors. But there is also a second path."

"Parallel to this development, a new family of browsers has emerged: the proxy-based (or client-server or compression) browser, which is epitomized by the Opera Mini," he continues. "These browsers move some caching and processing off the phone to a nearby server, allowing the browser to run on lower-cost processors and requiring as little as 4 Mb of memory. That means these browsers can be used on even the lowest-cost phones."

ABI’s research also indicates that the installed base of full Internet browsers will exceed that of proxy-based browsers sometime in 2012. The report can be found here.

ABI released another study this week, looking at mobile data usage, finding that it continues to grow exponentially as 3G technology spreads globally. ABI says that from 2009 to 2015 data usage in Western Europe and North America is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42% and 55% respectively.

ABI Research VP of forecasting Jake Saunders says, "While there is considerable fanfare and interest around the latest iPhone and Android phones from Apple, HTC and Motorola, ‘White Box’ or ‘Shanzai’ handset manufacturers are rapidly reshaping the low-cost handset segment as they redefine the ‘look and feel’ of the low-cost/ultra-low-cost segments."

"Many of these low-cost handset ‘brands,’ such as the ‘BlueBerry’ handset, sail pretty close to trademark infringement," the firm says. "While it has ‘Bold’ looks, RIM definitely does ‘not’ manufacture it. These handsets have very localized distribution, lack the full functions of the originals, and cater to end-users who, while they may not have deep pockets, do aspire to be smartphone users. These limited-function handsets, along with other low-cost models, will notch up 219 million sales in 2010."

Of course the real deals will be doing quite well too. Apple’s new iPhone 4 is already off to a pretty solid start, despite a list of complaints among users.

The report found that the Asia-Pacific region is currently lagging behind North America and Europe, but it is on track to surpass both regions by 2013 with 245 million visitors, driven by the growing popularity of local Chinese portals Sohu and Baidu.

Dominique Bonte
ABI Research
Practice Director

"In the US, the protracted battle between Google Maps and MapQuest has finally been won by Google surpassing its competitor in terms of visits for the first time in April 2009," says ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte.

"The unique Google Street View feature, the availability of Google Maps for mobile on the iPhone including the recently launched crowd-sourced traffic information, and geo-enabled location toolbars have all been deciding factors."

At the same time, navigation vendors TomTom and Nokia continue to integrate their online mapping portals into their mobile offerings. The TomTom route planner features real-time traffic information for immediate departures or historic speed information for future trips to find the best route.

The report also found that Nokia is increasingly promoting its Ovi Maps as a differentiator and that NAVTEQ has launched its own mapping portal with a suite of features.

The report found that the Asia-Pacific region is currently lagging behind North America and Europe, but it is on track to surpass both regions by 2013 with 245 million visitors, driven by the growing popularity of local Chinese portals Sohu and Baidu.

Dominique Bonte
ABI Research
Practice Director

"In the US, the protracted battle between Google Maps and MapQuest has finally been won by Google surpassing its competitor in terms of visits for the first time in April 2009," says ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte.

"The unique Google Street View feature, the availability of Google Maps for mobile on the iPhone including the recently launched crowd-sourced traffic information, and geo-enabled location toolbars have all been deciding factors."

At the same time, navigation vendors TomTom and Nokia continue to integrate their online mapping portals into their mobile offerings. The TomTom route planner features real-time traffic information for immediate departures or historic speed information for future trips to find the best route.

The report also found that Nokia is increasingly promoting its Ovi Maps as a differentiator and that NAVTEQ has launched its own mapping portal with a suite of features.

The report found that the Asia-Pacific region is currently lagging behind North America and Europe, but it is on track to surpass both regions by 2013 with 245 million visitors, driven by the growing popularity of local Chinese portals Sohu and Baidu.

Dominique Bonte
ABI Research
Practice Director

"In the US, the protracted battle between Google Maps and MapQuest has finally been won by Google surpassing its competitor in terms of visits for the first time in April 2009," says ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte.

"The unique Google Street View feature, the availability of Google Maps for mobile on the iPhone including the recently launched crowd-sourced traffic information, and geo-enabled location toolbars have all been deciding factors."

At the same time, navigation vendors TomTom and Nokia continue to integrate their online mapping portals into their mobile offerings. The TomTom route planner features real-time traffic information for immediate departures or historic speed information for future trips to find the best route.

The report also found that Nokia is increasingly promoting its Ovi Maps as a differentiator and that NAVTEQ has launched its own mapping portal with a suite of features.

The report found that the Asia-Pacific region is currently lagging behind North America and Europe, but it is on track to surpass both regions by 2013 with 245 million visitors, driven by the growing popularity of local Chinese portals Sohu and Baidu.

Dominique Bonte
ABI Research
Practice Director

"In the US, the protracted battle between Google Maps and MapQuest has finally been won by Google surpassing its competitor in terms of visits for the first time in April 2009," says ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte.

"The unique Google Street View feature, the availability of Google Maps for mobile on the iPhone including the recently launched crowd-sourced traffic information, and geo-enabled location toolbars have all been deciding factors."

At the same time, navigation vendors TomTom and Nokia continue to integrate their online mapping portals into their mobile offerings. The TomTom route planner features real-time traffic information for immediate departures or historic speed information for future trips to find the best route.

The report also found that Nokia is increasingly promoting its Ovi Maps as a differentiator and that NAVTEQ has launched its own mapping portal with a suite of features.

Related market research indicates that the worldwide wireless handset accessories market is worth about $63 billion in 2009.

Michael Morgan
Industry Analyst
Mobile Devices
ABI Research

"Chargers – car chargers, standard chargers and additional chargers – led the field in terms of numbers purchased," said Michael Morgan, ABI Research analyst.

"Carrying or protective cases were the next most popular, followed by batteries and memory cards. Other accessory types include hands-free kits, headsets, and cosmetic enhancements."

Within in those categories, age demographics played a role in the popularity of accessories. Younger (under 40) purchasers tended more than those over 40 to buy batteries, data connection cables and protective cases at the time of the phone’s purchase.

"The popularity of data cables and protective cases among young buyers reflects the greater likelihood that they own a higher-priced media-focused handset or smartphone," said Morgan.

The survey was conducted in July 2009, asked 1,000 adult consumers which of the many available accessories they acquired at the time the handset was purchased, and where they sourced the accessories they bought later.

The current global number of 300 million unique visitors is expected to grow at annual rate of 15 percent in the coming years, according to ABI research.

In the U.S. MapQuest and Google are competing for market leadership, leaving Yahoo Maps and Microsoft Live Search Maps trailing.

"For the time being, MapQuest seems able to maintain its number one position in the US with more than 40 million unique visitors per month by launching new interactive Map 2.0 features such as My Places," says ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte.

Dominique Bonte
ABI Research
Practice Director

"However, Google is expected to emerge as the market leader by the end of 2009, driven by superior virtual reality-based navigation simulation, Latitude social networking features, and traffic generated from Google Search. All major mapping portals now also offer dynamic location content such as real-time traffic and weather."

Europe shows a similar trend with traditional regional online mapping sites such as MapQuest, Multimap, Falk, and ViaMichelin being challenged by Internet companies. In developing regions such as China and Korea online mapping sites are facing strict government regulation limiting the use of aerial imagery.

A new category of navigation and location-based services is emerging with both TomTom and Nokia recently introducing online route planners.

The fixed-mobile convergence trend will continue to drive the integration between mobile and desktop mapping for applications such as social networking and advertising.