As it always happens at the end of every year we should draw a conclusion about things that happened in the industry in the last twelve month and make a prediction about what we are to expect in 2012. This is not about new retina and AMOLED displays, intelligent software assistants and devices that bridge the gap between smartphones and tablets. This is more about things that really matter – the state of the telecommunication industry as whole and mobile operators in particular. After all, mobile operators largely control the mobile industry as they provide the channel and decide what you can consume on your mobile device. At least, it is used to be so.

Do you remember Apple Keynote presentations? In the last three years at every each of them we saw Steve Jobs and Tim Cook saying big numbers. Each time they were more and more impressive. At the beginning of 2011 ten billion applications were downloaded from Apple App Store. And as of October 4, 2011 this number went to 18,000,000,000. What all these have to do with mobile operators? Well, when mobile operators were building 3G networks they were not expecting that other companies will use them as a dumb pipe.

It is widely known that carriers have been experiencing the decline of voice ARPUs for a while now. And 3G networks were supposed to be the solution that can enhance revenue. It all went the other way. Having invested copious amounts of money in 3G, carriers were left looking at how users crazily download content on mobile devices using their freshly built networks. It, of course, would not have been so bad if users actually payed good money for it. But carriers can’t charge the same amount of money for 3G as for broadband internet connection. They are forced to charge peanuts with affordable high-speed connection and Wi-Fi spots everywhere. It does not even compensate the money invested in 3G.

Take a look at a graph from Ofcom, International Communications Market Report 2011 that shows mobile data traffic consumption in 2009, 2010 and 2015:

So this is 21x growth in 4 years. That would’ve been a great news for mobile carriers. If not for the fact that 3G traffic will only become cheaper and this gigabytes will be used for downloading apps from Apple. Don’t forget about Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows Mobile that are getting more and more popular. They have their stores with apps too.

Smartphones are expected to be getting more popular and eventually replace regular mobile phones. This leaves carriers in a shady and cold place where everybody gets food except them. Will they get the power back?

Stay tuned.