London: Non traditional categories of digital gaming, online video, messaging apps, smart home, and digital music are showing faster growth, with projected five-year CAGRs of 5%-21% according to new research from Omdia. Although of smaller value than established telco services such as mobile data, pay TV and broadband, these fast-growing markets will be worth $513bn by 2027, the two biggest areas being digital gaming and online video.
Jonathan Doran, Principal Analyst, Digital Consumer Operator Strategy, Omdia commented: “Service providers must look beyond data and diversify into adjacent digital markets to enable continued growth of their telco consumer businesses. Many have already invested in TV and online video entertainment, but there are other fast-growing markets telcos can also explore. Adopting the right go-to-market strategy and business model for each individual service area will be critical to striking the balance between achieving market success and mitigating financial risk”.
Other areas offering strong future potential for telcos include e-health and financial services, and several leading players have already started to invest in these spaces. SK Telecom owns South Korea’s most popular online store with over 34 million active customers, while Vodacom South Africa has over 1.1 million monthly active users (MAUs) for its VodaPay service.
All growth areas, however, will experience significant competition from hyperscalers – specifically the global tech giants Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple . “In many areas, telcos will need to accept that competing head-on is unrealistic and developing partnerships with such players is not only more pragmatic but will also serve to strengthen their own products and brands” observes Doran. “Omdia’s Digital Consumer Operator Strategy Benchmark shows that the more service providers actively invest in a given service area – including through partnerships – the bigger market impact they have, which in turn better positions them to take a bigger slice of overall market revenue”.
