New CHANNEL BUZZ

Following my post from yesterday regarding the opportunity that Mobile Instant Messaging represents in Latin America, I found out that two major players, OZ and Neustar recently issued interesting press releases:

• NeuStar has announced that it has reached a milestone in the development of mobile instant messaging (IM) globally, having delivered 3 billion mobile IM messages across its servers (source).
• OZ announced that its mobile IM and mobile Email gateways have handled over 10 billion transactions to date. Adding to this milestone, OZ also announced that it has shipped its 100 millionth preloaded client on mobile phones (source).

Both companies quoted additional statistics showing the success of both Mobile Instant Messaging and Mobile Email in the North American and European markets. According to Allen Scott, general manager of NeuStar, "This is an important moment for mobile IM because it marks a significant step toward this service becoming a mainstream mobile application and a core service offering. It has taken just over a year to reach this milestone, and we know from the growth of IM in recent months that activity is accelerating in terms of both the number of messages and the number of active users worldwide" (source).