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Informa
Telecoms and Media senior analyst Daniel
Winterbottom who wrote the report says,
"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."
The
mobile entertainment space will also see
significant innovation and development.
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 per cent in 2006 to 36 per cent
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.
Evolving
services: The
report investigates a number of other areas
which will see growth in the next five years:
User-Generated
Content, the big story of the Internet in
2006, 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 whilst on the move. Informa forecasts
that the user-generated and communities
will be worth US$13.17 billion by 2011.
M-Commerce
faces a number of challenges and has already
hit a few stumbling blocks. Whilst 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
US$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.
Operator
strategies: The shape of the mobile
content market is defining the evolution
of the mobile operator as a business entity.
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. 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,"
concluded Winterbottom.
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