Not unsurprisingly, the market for mobile video calling services reached new heights in 2020, growing 1.8 billion, up from 1.2 billion in 2019, according to new data from Juniper Research.
This growth was fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic as the need for remote communication services became a staple after stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures became the way to work or visit friends.
Juniper Research forecasts that the number of mobile video calling service users will continue to grow, reaching 4.5 billion users by 2025, a 50% rise in global mobile subscribers.
“Innovation in the mobile voice and video space will come from consumer devices beyond smartphones, enabled by the IP-based nature of video calling services,” said George Crabtree, researcher at Juniper. “This provides the perfect platform for the development and rollout of new video calling services over the next four years.”
The two regions that will experience considerable uptake of mobile voice and video calling solutions will be North America and Europe over the next four years. By 2025, more than 70% of mobile subscribers are anticipated to use mobile video calling solutions in these regions.
Meanwhile, voice over LTE (VoLTE) connections will reach 5.5 billion by 2025, rising from 3.3 billion in 2021. This growth of 60% over the next four years will be accelerated by the adoption of 5G subscriptions by mobile subscribers. The increasing level of virtualization within core networks should be considered a priority for operators to handle increased VoLTE traffic, Juniper said.
