Indiantelevision.com Team

(12 March 2008 3:00 pm)

MUMBAI: A new study reports that Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif are the king and queen of mobile content in India. Mobile content and value-added services (VAS) provider IMImobile commissioned the study to find which movie stars are as popular on the mobile screen as they are on the big screen.

The study further reports that while Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Akshay Kumar and Sanjay Dutt all make up the male top 5 most downloaded movie star in terms of mobile content, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan all feature in the top 5 of the female category.

Movie mobile content ranges from ring tones of the film's big hits to graphics and wallpapers of the stars.

The IMImobile study takes into account all the Bollywood blockbusters from the last year.

IMImobile founder-CEO Vishwanath Alluri said, "India has the fastest-growing mobile population in the world and is projected to reach 400 million by 2010. Mobile music downloads top the bill and are currently valued at Rs 1.6-1.8 billion in the domestic market. The music content market is mainly driven by the passion for Bollywood and Tollywood; we see a spike in downloads around the big movie releases of the year. IMImobile has always striven to provide quality mobile content and the movie section of our catalogue has always been very successful with thousands of downloads a week. We expect mobile music videos to really take off this year."

Bollywood producers like Khan and Farhan Akhtar have used the mobile VAS route and made phenomenal profit even before the release of their latest films Don and Om Shanti Om.

Royalties worth approximately Rs 500-600 million were paid to the music industry in the past 18 months, and value added services - of which music with full song downloads, music videos and ring tones form the bulk - are estimated to contribute 15-20 per cent to the overall telecom company revenues.

About 400,000-500,000 ring tones are downloaded daily. Mono and polyphonic ring tones currently sell at a 75:25 ratio, while the fastest-growing ring tone genre is ring back tones with about 3.5 million users.

Ring tones and downloads are particularly popular with the youth. The IMImobile study into their own content downloads shows that when it comes to downloading mobile graphics from WAP sites, Priyanka Chopra is the most popular. More images of Priyanka are downloaded than of her co-star Shah Rukh Khan!

Kishore Kumar officially has the silkiest voice as he is downloaded more than any other Bollywood actor or actress for voice recordings of answer phone messages and other voice prompts.