The rising use of Facebook on mobile, combined with the company’s increasing mobile presence through products such as Facebook Messenger, represents a mid- to long-term threat to operator messaging, but also presents some mutually beneficial opportunities, according to the latest report from the Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Strategies service, “Facebook and Messaging: Threat or Opportunity.”

Operators must develop carefully considered partnerships with Facebook in order to drive the adoption of data plans, target specific customer segments and create wholesale revenue opportunities. Simultaneously, operators need to evolve their current messaging services, through initiatives such as Rich Communication Suite (RCS), which will help them keep up with the slick smartphone messaging applications that threaten to supplant SMS and MMS.

“In reality, user communication habits are increasingly fragmented as the number of alternative messaging services rises and growing smartphone ownership enables greater mobile access to those services. This trend is not going to disappear, so mobile operators need to adopt approaches which do not directly conflict with the development of core messaging business. Prioritizing Facebook over an operator’s own messaging services is not a wise approach. However, wholesaling SMS and MMS capacity to Facebook provides operators incremental revenue opportunities” commented Nitesh Patel, Senior Analyst.

David MacQueen, Director, Wireless Media Strategies, added, “It is not all bleak news for mobile operators. Operator messaging potentially allows for out-of-the-box, any network, any device messaging which consumers will always consider valuable. Therefore, it is critical that operators also evolve messaging services in order to provide a reliable alternative to over-the-top real time messaging services, such as Facebook Messenger.”

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