Mobile voice service revenue in Latin America (LATAM) will decline from $33.7bn in 2017 to $27.1bn by 2020, with a negative Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.0% between 2017 and 2020, due to the growing adoption of over-the-top (OTT) voice applications such as Skype, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

LATAM’s OTT voice applications users reached 150.4 million in 2017 and will increase to 264.8 million by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 14.4% over the forecast period. OTT voice applications penetration of population will more than double from 13.9% in 2017 to 34.7% in 2020.

Leandro Agion, Senior Technology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “In an attempt to offset the decline from mobile voice service revenue, operators are focusing on data-intensive plans to drive mobile data service revenue by taking advantage of growing smartphone adoption, along with expanding 4G network availability.

“To achieve this, telecom operators in the region are leveraging plans with zero-rating OTT usage, such as WhatsApp messaging, and larger mobile data quotas, thus fostering OTT voice usage. This is a regional go-to-market strategy followed by pan-regional operators such as Telefónica and América Móvil, and local ones such as Personal Argentina, Tim Brazil, among others.”