Consumer communication platforms: trends and outlook

Social messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, LINE and WeChat are opening up their capabilities to third parties with the aim of becoming the conduits for a range of new services and experiences. This short report considers the phenomenon of consumer platforms and outlines some ways for operators to participate in the changes that are happening in the industry.

This report provides:

• a discussion of the role that fragmentation plays in social and communication markets and how it varies internationally
• an outline of some of the impacts of changing modes of interaction with apps and services (for example, voice assistants, like Siri, can change existing models of service discovery, and AI promises to pre-empt some decision-making)
• an overview of some of the approaches that are available to telecoms operators, such as providing developers with access to messaging via their own or third-party APIs.