Lucent Technologies estimates that U.S. service providers can tap a market potentially worth almost $10 billion a year by offering personalized services that blend voice and data applications across fixed and mobile networks, according a study conducted by the firm.
Lucent's research, conducted last year, involved 1,250 men and women, ages 15 and over -- 650 for the business survey and 600 for the consumer survey. The types of services covered in the survey were culled from focus groups. Survey questions were designed to determine which features were most valuable to people and the effect of various capabilities and pricing on demand.
Lucent said it launched the study to help the company and its service provider customers understand and evaluate the market for the personal services that can be enabled by an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)-based network.
The converged services market estimate is based on a projected offering of several bundles of services customized to fit the needs of specific market segments identified in the research and priced at $10 to $35 a month. The pricing and the projected take rates were derived from a combination of survey responses from 1,250 people and related business modeling.
Lucent's research indicates that the types of applications that have the greatest value, depending upon the segment, are those that offer integrated communications, rapid real-time response that enables impromptu conversations and spontaneous collaboration capability.
Some key findings:
- People indicating most interest in blended services include "road warriors" at large companies who want a centralized database for communications needs (email, voicemail, addresses, etc.); customer service employees at mid-size companies who need real-time communications to meet customer needs; individuals in younger demographics -- teens and those in their early 20s -- who find spontaneous communications, such as click-to- conference, appealing and so-called power consumers, generally older professionals, who rely heavily on the phone but would like to be able to use it even more for multimedia communications.
- The research shows that companies and other enterprises offer the greatest potential market for converged services, with the potential to reach an estimated $5.6 billion a year within five years after the services are introduced. The consumer market for these services has the potential to reach a projected $4.2 billion in that same time period.
- In the enterprise market, the bulk of the revenue opportunity appears to lie in two segments -- described as the "high group interaction" segment and "high customer interaction" segment.
- The high group interaction segment is dominated by large companies that employ knowledge workers (professional services, financial services, etc.) who travel frequently, yet interact extensively within their work groups. People in this group said they need the ability to collaborate with mobile work group members and stay in touch while away from their office. This segment is interested in a central database allowing access to communications needs (voicemail, email, addresses, etc.), from any device (including wireless and wireline). This group indicated that capabilities, such as shared information update alerts, ability to contact others in real-time, buddy list and universal instant messaging, would be helpful to them.
- Mid-size companies that employ service workers (e.g. restaurants, hotels, transportation, delivery etc.) dominate the high customer interaction segment. These workers continuously interact with customers and need immediate responses to their questions and requests. People in this segment are looking for capabilities that can improve the response to customer inquiries and increase the accessibility of employees to customers and employees to employees. This segment is interested in real-time communications features such as advanced call forwarding and click for live conferencing.
- The bulk of the opportunity in the consumer converged services market appears to lie in two segments -- the youth segment dominated by single males and power users consisting of older professionals.
