Automated SMS Messages to Grow 20% by 2022, Exceeding 2.7 Trillion, as WhatsApp Disrupts the Market

Hampshire, UK: 21st November 2017: The volume of A2P (Application to Person) messaging is expected to increase by 20% over the next 5 years to more than 2.7 trillion by 2022, up from 2.1 trillion this year - a new report from Juniper Research has found.

The new report, A2P Messaging: Opportunities, Competition & Forecasts 2017-2022, claimed that this growth would be driven by an increase in automated marketing, payments and authentication messages. A2P is defined as an automated SMS message sent from an enterprise to an end user.

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Grey Route Traffic to Fall 11% over the Next 5 Years
The research claimed that grey route traffic, defined as ’A2P traffic veiled as P2P traffic’, will fall by 11% between 2017 and 2022. Operators’ efforts, in partnership with SMS firewall providers, in detecting grey routes will continue to be the driving force behind this reduction. With total SMS traffic forecasts to exceed 30 billion messages per day in 2022, the report claimed that AI (Artificial Intelligence) would be required to efficiently analyse the high level of SMS traffic.

‘Operators are implementing these services to move as many as possible grey route messages to directly connected routes’ notes research author Sam Barker, ‘However, there will be enterprises who are unwilling to pay the additional fees for directly connected A2P services, and operators risk losing this business entirely’.

Operators Turn to RCS to Combat Rise of OTT Enterprise Messaging

In response to rising enterprise usage of OTT applications, the research anticipates that operators will begin roll outs of RCS (Rich Communication Suite) services, combining the high level of reach of SMS messaging and the rich functionality of OTT applications.

Additionally, the research found this increase of enterprise messaging over OTT applications will subsequently create a new use case for A2P SMS traffic. User verifications and OTPs (One Time Passwords) will require the ubiquitous nature of SMS services as a starting point. Furthermore, SMS will continue to be required as a fall back option against OTT applications.

Source: Juniper Research media announcement