The latest report by business research and analysis company Screen Digest shows that television and music will be the key focus of the mobile market by 2011.
Although mobile gaming has been around the longest, with Snake appearing on mobiles back in 1997, research points to incremental market growth in the next few years.
This market is currently worth €1.6bn. However, 50pc of this is generated from South Korea and Japan alone.
Analyst for Screen Digest David MacQueen said that he believed the games market would stall altogether unless current business models change.
While the games market goes stale, music looks set to grow huge over the next five years to €1.47bn, an eightfold increase from 2006 figures.
According to Screen Digest, one of the main reasons for this growth will be the emergence of subscription services that offer more than simple audio tracks.
Many mobile companies design handsets targeted specifically at music fans, with operators such as O2 Ireland offering Napster Mobile, with an online catalogue of over two million tracks.
However, Screen Digest predicts that by 2011 most music played on mobile handsets will still be content loaded from PCs, rather than direct downloads.
The newest of mobile offerings – mobile TV – is predicted to grow the most in terms of revenue and popularity over the next five years.
Screen Digest has projected that it will generate €4.7bn in revenue from approximately 140 million subscribers by 2011.
Although mobile TV has limitations in screen size, the uptake has been promising in both Japan and South Korea, with no fewer than six million people watching broadcast TV on their handsets.
In Italy just under half a million mobile users have subscribed to mobile TV only a few months following its launch.
“Regulatory and competitive pressures have pushed down the average consumer spend on voice and messaging. Mobile operators must now look to new content offerings to deliver the business growth they’ve enjoyed over the past decade.
“Screen Digest believes that the revenue is out there, and operators should be looking to TV, music and games to deliver it,” said MacQueen.
By Marie Boran
