Owing to the surging competition and lower income consumers gaining access to mobile services, the Average Revenue per User (ARPU) has declined considerably over the past few years. The decreasing ARPU has encouraged the mobile network operators to invest more on mobile-VAS services platform to attract more users. Mobile-VAS services constitute an important source of revenue generation for network operators. The technological development has led to evolvement of improved quality mobile VAS services in the mobile industry of South Africa.
“Declining Average Revenue per User (ARPU) and increasing competition amongst the mobile operators have been the two key factors affecting the mobile value added services market in South Africa. A major challenge faced by the mobile network operators is to increase their revenues by differentiating their offerings and build an alternative revenue path by providing more mobile-VAS to their subscribers.” – According to the research report ‘South Africa Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) Market Outlook to 2018 - Driven by Rising Mobile Internet Penetration’ by Ken Research.
The mobile operators work collectively with content providers, content aggregators and technology providers to enrich the content and offer innovative value added services to the users contributing to an improved user experience. The content providers have been developing content specific applications and products in regional languages to cater the needs of the local people. The easy accessibility of entertainment services like music, live streaming of videos and TV serials and mobile gaming has considerably driven the mobile VAS industry in the country.
The mobile-VAS market in South Africa is poised to expand in the next several years on account of increasing mobile internet users in the country. The demand for local music by the end users is likely to create opportunities for the music content providers in South Africa to develop new music content to cater to the domestic needs of the customers. The increasing penetration of 3G and LTE services in the country is anticipated to affect the growth of the mobile-VAS in the near future.
The report provides detailed overview on the mobile-VAS market in South Africa and helps readers to identify the ongoing trends in the key segments of the industry and anticipated growth in future depending upon changing industry dynamics in coming years. The report will aid industry consultants, mobile network operators and telecommunication companies, content providers, content aggregators and technology providers and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to ongoing and expected trends in future.