Research and Markets: Success and Innovation with Mobile Value-Added Services (VAS)

The continued decline in ARPU in many mobile markets emphasises the strategic need to develop successful mobile value-added services (m-VAS) to ensure resilient and sustainable revenue generation for the future. Mobile VAS, successfully implemented, can also improve customer loyalty and increase market share. The rapid expansion of 3G, HSPA and 4G networks in combination with the wide availability of smartphones, netbooks, tablets and other broadband mobile devices is also enabling the potential to develop new and innovative mobile value-added services.

Without new and compelling m-VAS solutions, the threat of relegation to bit-pipe status for MNOs is becoming ever greater as VoIP bypass, competition and regulation all conspire to make it more and more difficult to retain financial viability with a basic telephony model.

The importance of this area

Despite the importance of this area, there have been many m-VAS introduced to the market that have had little or no impact on revenues or customer loyalty and MNOs that have spent on infrastructure, software development and marketing find themselves with no attributable business improvements. Also, while there is a perception that new technology will deliver capability to support new and better VAS, many of the success stories in this area are actually based on old (SMS) platforms but they happen to meet a clear and previously unmet need in a customer base.