Multiservice subscriptions to take off in 2021, some bumps along the way

multiservice subscriptions
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According to Juniper Research’s 2021 Tech and Telco Mega Trend report, Multiservice subscriptions will increasingly take centre stage over the next year or so.

Of course, we see some evidence of this already, as Amazon Prime and Apple, among others, launch multiservice subscriptions. This trend is set to grow rapidly and will account for $42 billion in consumer revenue next year. While the main region to see this trend will be North America, Juniper believes that the growth across the Asia Pacific region will be significant.

Essentially Juniper believes that multiservice subscriptions will follow a tried and tested path to subscription maturity, where – hopefully – common sense and a focus on the customer will be the main factors.

The same pattern happened when telecoms billing went from a paper ‘demand for payment’ to a proactive marketing tool that everyone wanted a piece of. It started with one or two players sending electronic bills, was followed by an aggregator and grew in fits and starts until it became commonplace.

The same will happen in multiservice subscriptions, except this time let us hope that there is a little more marketing creativity and flair involved. In the telecoms billing world, the conclusion ended up being ‘no-one really looks at their bill unless customers see something that looks out of the ordinary on their bank statement. Then they look at their bill.’ An opportunity missed.

We will likely see more creativity from the likes of Amazon, Apple and Google than we did from telecoms companies. These companies have been engaging with consumers for years, and subscriptions are somehow more positive than bills, even though you are essentially doing the same thing. Buying stuff.

One warning shot that Juniper fires across the bows of the big tech companies hoping this is another money spinner is that they must be careful of subsidising some smaller services to leverage the opportunity that multiservice subscriptions triggers. If they do, then they will run afoul of regulators around the world, who are looking for excuses to accuse them of anti-competitive behaviour. Whilst this is laughable – companies who sell things have always used the ‘lost leader’ ploy (half price branded champagne, for example) to get customers through the door – it is true.

Whatever the bumps along the way, we agree that a strong movement in multiservice subscriptions is highly likely over the next few years as we get bored of too much picking and choosing between subscriptions to find what we need at the price we want it.

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