The addition of new subscribers may be pulling down voice revenues in India. But the new subscribers are driving the overall usage of SMS and are predicted to touch 191.6 billion by 2013, says Gartner.

Mobile messages in Asia-Pac and Japan are expected to rise to 1.9 trillion messages by the end of 2009 at a 15.5% rise as compared to 2008 figures. Next year the figures in the region are estimated to rise to 2.1 trillion at a growth rate of 12.7%.

“Strong organic growth continues in Asia's developing markets, with marginal subscribers turning to low-cost messaging as an entry-level service,” says Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. ”In the mature markets of the Asia/Pacific region, SMS has seen sustained healthy growth as a result of steady price declines and increasingly generous SMS and data bundles.”

The financial meltdown has indeed slowed down the growth of mobile messaging traffic but still the rate is in double digits.

MMS which has failed to match SMS in popularity, is now picking pace since 2008 bagged by factors such as reduced tariffs and use of MMS over the social networking medium.

"’Big bucket’ or large inclusive SMS and MMS bundles will also increase traffic by lowering the price barriers to usage,” says Gupta. “At the same time, competition and network efficiencies will continue to drive down the retail price of SMS and MMS for consumers. Application traffic will continue to support growth, especially in the mature markets.”

However the SMS segment will have to counter challenge from other types of messaging such as mobile email and mobile instant messaging.