The Arab regional market is becoming ripe for Short Message Services (SMS), a service which lets cellular phone owners communicate by text messages, according to a recent study.
The Arab Advisors Group, an information and communications technology research and consulting company, said in their study, cited by the Daily Star on Monday, that “investment in WAP is proving costly as it requires a new technology infrastructure.”
Operators already offer the SMS and the existing hand-set base is already SMS-enabled.
The report also said that the combination of SMS and prepay phones had replaced struggling pager services in the region, as cost-conscious prepay users resorted to SMS, effectively "pagerizing" their phones.
The number of cellular phone users in the Middle East has been rising steadily, according to the study.
According to research conducted in 10 Arab countries by the Arab Advisors Group, 7.4 percent of the overall population, (12 million out of 162 million), uses cellular phones.
The UAE has the highest proportion of cellular users in the area, at 52 percent, while Algeria has the lowest rate, with only 0.32 percent of the population owning phones.
Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia were also covered in the survey.
The Arab Advisor's Group predicts that strong growth in Arab cellular phone markets will continue.
The Algerian market, with it dismal penetration level, may grow when the country's second cellular operator enters the market next year, it added – Albawaba.com
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