Mobile Internet To Herald Growth In Content And Service Revenues

Informa says that despite falling average revenues per user for mobile operators, the mobile content and services market will continue to grow dramatically as services and applications reach maturity and new services begin to gain traction.

The latest edition of Informa’s Mobile Content and Services report says that the introduction of a whole host of new players into the value chain presents new opportunities for growth in the mobile content and services market, whilst simultaneously posing a threat to mobile operators who face losing control of the billing relationship with their customers.

Informa anticipates that by 2011, just under half of all mobile subscribers worldwide will use mobile browsing, a trend it sees developing with new operator offerings such as T-Mobile’s ‘Web n Walk’ service and 3’s ‘X-Series’ services.

Despite this, messaging is predicted to continue to dominate the overall revenues for the market, generating over half the total revenue in 2011 (from 67% in 2006).

Daniel Winterbottom, senior analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media and author of the report, said: “”Advanced mobile content and services have been slow to take off, but this should not be confused with the deepening relationship that we have with our mobile phones.

“We may not be buying as many games, full-track downloads or multimedia messages as operators would like, but we are spending a huge amount of time sending and reading text messages and organising our lives using the phone’s address book, clock, alarm and calendar functions.

“Over time, users will warm to other data services as well. The mobile web is a prime example: WAP failed to take off when it was first launched, but five years on, more and more users have become comfortable with accessing news or other information on their mobile phones.”

Mobile music will be a major contributor to the revenues achieved in the mobile entertainment market in the next 5 years, says Informa, although its overall share of the market will fall from 40% in 2006 to 36% in 2011 as new forms of entertainment such as mobile TV and video services begin to gain consumer interest.

Games, gambling, personalisation and adult content will all see significant growth, as the overall mobile entertainment market grows from US$18.84 billion in 2006 to US$38.12 billion in 2011.

In addition, Informa forecasts that user-generated content and communities will be worth US$13.17 billion by 2011.

Winterbottom concluded: “The arrival of the mobile web on the mobile handset over in 2007 and beyond will see users embracing the same content they take for granted on their PCs. Operators need to ensure they are firmly locked into this value chain or risk missing out on what will be an enormous market by 2011.”

A recent study by Screen Digest for the European Commission said that the relatively slow uptake of 3G in Europe and the sometimes confusing pricing of data tariffs are obstacles still facing mobile online content (see European Online Content Revenues To Reach €13 Billion).

Meanhwhile, the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association show that The number of mobile phone users accessing the internet on their handsets continued to grow during the last quarter of 2006, with a quarterly increase in the average unique users per month from 13 to 15 million (see Mobile Internet User Numbers Grow).