Review of the phone-paid services market in the UK

The problem

• The Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) publishes, on an annual basis, a report providing an overview of the size of the phone-paid service market in the UK, a discussion of the key market drivers, and an outlook for the market over the next 12 months
• The PSA commissioned Analysys Mason for the second consecutive year to prepare this study on its behalf

The solution

• We conducted a survey of 5000 users of phone-paid services in the UK to evaluate adoption and key factors affecting usage and overall satisfaction
• We conducted in-depth interviews with executives in senior positions across 17 organisations with activities in the phone-paid services industry (including mobile operators, fixed operators, intermediaries, platform providers, service providers and trade associations) to validate our understanding of market developments and inform modelling assumptions
• We developed a detailed market model to quantify consumer adoption and spend on 47 individual phone-paid services across 13 service categories in 2019/20¹
• We produced a forecast of consumer spend up to 2022/23 by projecting key modelling drivers based on insights generated from our interviews with industry participants (paying particular attention to the likely impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the phone-paid services market)

Figure: End-user spend on phone-paid services in the UK, 2019/20 (GBP million, excl. VAT)

The result

• The PSA published the latest version of the report in August 2020²

¹ From April 2019 to March 2020; ² See https://psauthority.org.uk/-/media/Files/PSA/00NEW-website/Research-and-consultations/Research/PSA-annual-market-review-2019-2020.pdf; ³ Includes personal and relationship services; competitions and quizzes; digital payments; information, news and education; and device personalisation and security.