See today’s update from Om Malik on the state of Symbian & Nokia. As part of this post, is a link to another great Giga Om post on what’s wrong at Nokia: http://gigaom.com/2009/07/17/nokia-sells-off-symbians-professional-services-business/

MetroPCS Boosts Q1 Subscribers by 51%

It’s a good time to be a budget cell phone company, judging by the subscriber numbers out this morning from MetroPCS. The cellular operator added 687,000 net new subscribers in the first quarter of this year, up 51 percent over last quarter’s record number. MetroPCS, which provides flat-rate service on a month-to-month basis to customers in limited markets, now has a total of 6 million subscribers vs. 4.4 million in the same period a year ago. It’s capitalizing on the financial crisis to emphasize its pre-paid cell plans, flat-rate pricing and good in-home coverage, which enables subscribers to dump their land lines. It also, however, saw churn rise from to 5 percent from 4 percent, reflecting a rise in the amount of turnover from month to month via subscribers who drop or then restart their plans.

“According to data published by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) as reported by Japan Today, mobile calls accounted for 44.8% of total hours of telecommunications traffic in the fiscal year ending 31 March 2007, eclipsing fixed line phone traffic for the first time ever.”

Amazing when you think about it this way: Bell’s first phone call over a wire took place back in 1876, and for over 132 years we’ve spent time gabbing on the POTS, or Plain Old Telephone Service. In just 25 years, we actually have more wireless calls than wired in some areas of the world.”

Verizon Wireless is refuting reports it will introduce a 3-cent fee for all mobile-terminated messages delivered across its network. According to an email sent last week by Verizon billing partner OpenMarket, the operator planned to append a 3-cent charge to both standard-rate and premium text programs. But in a subsequent email distributed to the press, Verizon spokesperson Jeffrey Nelson writes “We are currently assessing how to best address the changing messaging marketplace, and are communicating with messaging aggregators, our valued content partners, our technology business partners and, importantly, our friends in the non-profit and public policy arenas. To that end, we recently notified text messaging aggregators–those for-profit companies that provide services to content providers to aggregate and bill for their text messaging programs–that we are exploring ways to offset significantly increased costs for delivering billions upon billions of text messages each month.”

According to Nelson, the rate hike outlined in the OpenMarket email “has been mistakenly characterized as a final decision to implement. We don’t envision this type of change to in any way affect non-profit organizations or political and advocacy organizations.” He adds that Verizon Wireless has not increased the per-message cost to aggregators since introducing its messaging service in 2003, and the carrier has “never envisioned a cost to consumers or content companies, but rather on content aggregators themselves.” In an interview with The New York Times, Nelson maintained Verizon Wireless has not set any specific price for text delivery or a date a new fee might go into effect: “There is nothing imminent, November 1 or any other date.”

Hampshire, UK – 30th September 2008: A new analysis by Juniper Research of the rapidly evolving market for money transfer and remittances via mobile phones forecasts that in excess of 100m users globally will use their mobile phones to make international money transfers by 2013. These cross border mobile money transfers are currently in their infancy, but are expected to gain traction over the next two to three years, especially on migration routes such as Philippines/Middle East and Mexico/USA.

The report found that there is a significant opportunity for mobile money transfer service providers and vendors, for both national services between mobile users in a single country and internationally. The study explores how mobile money transfer will transform the ability of the ‘underbanked’ population and migrant workers to make remittances, using their mobile phones as mobile wallets.

Report author Howard Wilcox explained: “The vast increase in migrant workers globally has fuelled the number of remittances being sent home to friends and families regularly. The mobile phone will become a vital enabler in developing countries because often many more people have phones than have bank accounts. The GSM Association Mobile Money Transfer global initiative emphasises the importance that is attached to this across the mobile industry as a whole.”

Highlights from the report include:
• Mobile international transfers are forecast to grow in frequency as users become more accustomed to the process, exceeding one per month by 2013 on average globally.
• The opportunity for companies providing national and international money transfer services is forecast to exceed $5bn by 2013.
• The top 3 regions (W. Europe, N. America and Africa & Middle East) will represent over 75% of the global international mobile money transfer gross transaction value by 2013.

The report provides six year regional forecasts of mobile money transfers and remittances, providing data on subscriber take-up, transaction sizes and volumes for both national (domestic) and international transactions. Crucially, the report identifies the incremental ARPU opportunity for mobile network operators, arising from these new services. Case studies and interviews with companies pioneering in this market are also featured.

Whitepapers and further details of the study, ‘Mobile Payment Markets: Mobile Money Transfers and Remittances 2008-2013’ can be freely downloaded from http://www.juniperresearch.com. Alternatively please contact John Levett at john.levett@juniperresearch.com, telephone +44(0)1256 830002.

Further reports in the Mobile Payments Series are:
• Mobile Payment Markets: Digital and Physical Goods 2008-2013 (published in July 2008)
• Mobile Payment Markets: Contactless NFC 2008-2013 (published in July 2008)
• Mobile Payment Markets: Strategies and Forecasts 2008-2013 (published in September 2008)

Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.