A recent report showed that income derived from voice calls has dropped for mobile phone service companies.  However, that does not mean mobile phone service providers are suffering.  In fact, despite the drop in voice call revenue, mobile phone services have increased their revenue by 1.1 per cent – mostly due to the increasing number of smartphone users who surf rather than chat.
According to the ratings agency Fitch, using our SmartPhones to access FaceBook and Twitter is especially favoured by us here in the UK and our friends over in Germany. Unfortunately, as Fitch points out, despite our eagerness to post and micro-blog, revenue from data services will not be enough in the long run to replace the income lost through fewer voice calls. That means, our service providers may need to lower their rates or find another way to bring in revenue. In addition, with Vodafone, o2, Orange, and T-Mobile joining together to provide pay with mobile services using NFC, the latter may be the way they go.  Of course, a combination of the two solutions might be nice.
Fitch also says that the risks of lowered voice calls due to higher data use are to be expected in areas where economies are better.  Whereas, in areas such as Southern Europe, where many of the Spanish and Italians have lost their jobs, voice calls are rising while data use has dropped –because people are packing in their smartphones and using less expensive regular mobiles, without data plans.