Informa Telecoms & Media is predicting that the mobile web will herald dramatic growth in revenues in the mobile content and services market. Despite falling average revenues per user (ARPU) for mobile operators, Informa says 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 Informas Mobile Content and Services report reveals that the introduction of a host of new players into the value chain presents new opportunities for growth in the mobile content and services market, while simultaneously posing a threat to mobile operators, who face losing control of the billing relationship with their customers.
Mobile handset and network technology has now evolved to a point where true mobile web access is possible, says Informa. It 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-Mobiles Web n Walk and 3s X-Series services. Despite this, Informa believes that messaging, headed by SMS, will continue to dominate the overall revenues for the market, generating over half the total revenue in 2011 (from 67% in 2006).

“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 says Daniel Winterbottom, Senior Analyst
with Informa and author of the report. 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 phones 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.
The mobile entertainment space will also see significant innovation and
development, says Informa. Several technologies, such as mobile music,
have been available for a number of years but the increased
availability of high-speed data networks such as 3G and HSDPA is giving
further appeal to these services. Mobile music will be a major
contributor to the revenues achieved in the mobile entertainment market
in the next five years, 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 $18.84 billion (9.58 billion) in 2006 to $38.12 billion in 2011.
The report also investigates a number of other areas which will see growth in the next five years. These include:
User-Generated Content (UGC). The big story of the Internet in 2006,
UGC will continue to extend to the mobile space, as new applications
begin to extend communities to users on the move, and provide further
means for mobile users to contribute content while on the move. Informa
forecasts that the user-generated and communities will be worth $13.17
billion by 2011.
M-Commerce faces a number of challenges and has already hit a few
stumbling blocks, says Informa. While payments for digital content
on-portal continue to function, the growth in off-portal content and
the migration to the mobile web will open up the market to other
players. Google and eBay are both vying hungrily for this space. Using
the mobile as a vector for physical payments, however, has proven more
complex and whilst the technology, in terms of Near Field
Communications chips embedded in handsets, is readily available, it has
been a struggle to prove demand outside of the Far East. Informa
estimates that the worldwide market for m-commerce was $359 million in
2006, coming mostly from the Asia-Pacific region.
Mobile TV will continue to be the focus of much excitement from mobile
operators, as broadcast services using a range of different
technologies are rolled out across Europe. It remains to be seen if
consumers will be as excited about the services, and how operators will
manage the issues of advertising and pricing which will be critical to
the success of the service.
The shape of the mobile content market is defining the evolution of the
mobile operator as a business entity, says Informa. The report
investigates alternate approaches that are being taken by different
operators, from those remaining pure play mobile, diversifying into
new vertical markets or business applications, to those converging into
a one-stop communications house. It gauges how these strategies will
pan out and where each strategy is likely to take hold in different
regions.
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 says Winterbottom. 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.
The report costs 2,495 for a paper copy, 3,743 for a single-user PDF, or 4,990 for a single-user PDF and paper copy. For more information or to order the report click here.