Here we are again at the end of May with a little round up of the most interesting news from the mobile messaging world in the past month. It has been a busy couple of weeks for us here at GMS, with preparations underway for some exciting events slated for the coming months. Top on our radar is the Mobile World Congress at the end of June, which you will read more about below.
Mobile leads digital commerce spend
A new study by Juniper Research predicts that mobile commerce will account for 73% of all digital commerce transactions by value in 2021; rising to 79% by 2025.
According to the study, mobile has emerged as the most important way to access services, and although online will remain relevant for higher-value transactions, your user experience must be mobile first.
“Mobile apps are the dominant force in digital commerce, with user experience becoming critical, as products become heavily commoditised. Merchants must leverage AI-based analytics to ensure a truly personalised mobile commerce experience, or they will lose out to more digitally adept merchants,” said Nick Maynard, the report’s author.
Viber sees strong growth in business messages and ads amidst COVID-19
Viber is a valued partner of GMS and an industry leader in the OTT messaging space. Like many companies Viber saw a huge change in the way their customers and brands used their services during the pandemic. It noted a whopping 58% increase in the number of new business channels launched by brands.
Viber also reported a 21% increase in the amount of businesses messages sent worldwide in 2020. Additionally, transactional messages grew by 37%. The Philippines in particular was extremely taken with Viber, as transactional messages sent there increased almost 300%!
SMEs to account for more than half of CPaaS market by 2031, study predicts
CPaaS is about to become big business and SMEs will play a big role, says a new report by Future Market Insights. According to the report, the market is expected to reach US$ 5.28 Bn by the end of 2021. It will also exhibit exponential growth between 2021 and 2031, the report said.
Some of the biggest areas of expansion will be into the small and medium business sector, with SMEs forecast to make up half of the CPaaS market in just ten years.
CPaaS’ ability to bring together multiple channels of communication was a perfect fit for the new digital and remote world we found ourselves in during lockdowns, quarantines and the new work/study from home reality of 2020. In fact if you look at the IT industry, 80% of the workforce started working from home in 2020 and has yet to return.
GSMA hoping for up to 50,000 to attend MWC Barcelona
Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona is the biggest event on our industry calendar, attracting 109,500 people when it was last held in person in 2019. MWC is returning to Barcelona in June 2021, and organisers GSMA are expecting to see up to 50,000 attendees in person.
Attendees will have to show a negative Covid-19 result to gain entry into the Fira Gran Via venue and repeat the test every 72 hours.
GSMA has engaged 300 keynote speakers for the event. Seventy percent of them will attend in person, while the rest will appear virtually.
GMS is going to be at MWC Barcelona, so if you’re one of those 50,000 attendees why not book a meeting with our team?
GMS is taking the fight to FluBot with the Zero Trust approach
FluBot malware is the latest menace to hit the messaging world. While it primarily targets mobile banking and cryptocurrency apps, it gathers a huge amount of data from every app on the device.
An attacker sends a fake SMS “informing” the recipient about an undelivered parcel or a problem with a bank account. The attackers will often use SMS spoofing to falsify the sender ID, which causes the fake messages to appear in the same thread as legitimate ones.
Following the links inside the fake message takes the subscribers to a legitimate website hacked by criminals, which walks the users through the steps necessary to reduce their device’s security and install the malware.
It is an extremely smart and insidious software, and unfortunately, it is also reducing the trust that the general population have in SMS. Especially — URLs delivered via this channel.
GMS is taking the fight to FluBot by imposing a zero-tolerance policy with GMS Messaging Protection’s Zero Trust approach. With our messaging protection, your users can feel safe, as only messages that contain URLs we know to be safe, get through.