Driven by rising demand for video, the market for premium mobile content is expected to exceed AU$51 billion in 2011, more than double the AU$23 billion in 2007, predicts analyst firm iSuppli.
Premium mobile content consists of mobile music, games, graphics, video and adult content for mobile platforms, mainly wireless handsets.
Mobile video is the fastest growing media segment, while music and gaming continue to enjoy strong growth but with significant regional variation.
The mobile data market overall is continuing to expand robustly, driven by strong mobile content growth and a sustained rise in mobile messaging. However, significant differences in growth rates are emerging. iSuppli’s research has identified the following regional and country-level trends:
- In Asia, India leads Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) growth of non-messaging data revenue at 40.4 percent.
- Italy will see the strongest non-messaging data revenue CAGR through 2011 among major Western European countries, at 29 percent. Ringtones represent the strongest segment today, but video will dominate Italy’s mobile content revenue by 2011, followed by games.
- In the Americas, Brazil will see a 41 percent CAGR for non-messaging data revenue.
“Data and content revenues are the life preservers for wireless operators, as voice Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) declines accelerated during Q2 among the 20 key operators tracked by iSuppli,” said Mark Kirstein, vice president with iSuppli. “Drawn from our deep operator profiles, aggregate voice ARPU in the first quarter declined by 6 percent sequentially compared to the fourth quarter of 2006. Meanwhile, mobile data ARPU increased by 1 percent sequentially. Data ARPU is particularly strong among North American operators, where both messaging revenue and mobile multimedia content are seeing strong growth.”
iSuppli’s Mobile Multimedia Content Tracker, covers the value chain for delivering digital music, video and gaming to mobile handsets. Coverage detailed country-level and operator-level analysis of, mobile data, mobile messaging and mobile multimedia by type.
