The Mobile Entertainment Forum has released its Top 10 Mobile Media Trends for 2010. Noting that 2009 has been a turbulent year for the global economy, the MEF says that the mobile industry has weathered the storm remarkably well, as its quarterly Business Confidence Index (BCI) has shown. In the last BCI, the global mobile media industry predicted growth of 33% in the next year, although the organisation believes that the industry has the potential to beat this projection.
This time last year, MEF made a number of predictions that came to fruition in 2009. It predicted that mobile applications would emerge as a content category in their own right and with more than 24 application stores now launched and several billion apps downloaded, it says, this has clearly been realised. The MEF also predicted the proliferation of touchscreen devices would drive discoverability and content usage which is self-evident, with seemingly every handset maker producing a touchscreen device and strong consumer demand for the interactive functionality this interface provides.
Here then, is the MEFs take on the top trends in mobile media for 2010.

1. Fragmentation and variance amongst handsets and now application stores will continue to plague the industry, however the growth of applications on the Android platform will close the gap on Apples App Store.
2. Operator-enabling services will start to be widely deployed, facilitating the growth of rich media content that is simpler, faster and offers a better user experience.
3. Media publishers will start to experiment with micro-payments, subscription service models and alternative payment methods which challenge the operators dominance, with Rupert Murdochs decision to charge for online media content highlighting an already fierce debate.
4. Books will emerge as a new and popular content category for Smartphones.
5. Technology innovation will continue, with content developers experimenting with 3D mobile video viewers and Augmented Reality for mobile.
6. The emerging risk of illicit charging by in-app billing will be met by firm regulatory action.
7. Significant tightening of premium rate regulation in the Atlantic region will spread across the world.
8. 2010 will be the year of multiplatform dual-delivery of content, including music, video and games, across mobile phones, TVs and PCs.
9. The growing consumer demand for data-heavy services will put greater pressure on networks, with flat rate data tariffs increasingly subjected to stringent download limits.
10. Complexity, confusion and ambiguity in the application of rights to the mobile platform will be addressed seriously in 2010.