David Sidebottom, an analyst at Understanding and Solutions, says the hot new applications will be downloading full-length music tracks and music videos on mobiles, plus TV broadcasts over mobiles. “We see consumers paying subscriptions of between $5 and $10 per month for mobile TV services,” he says, particularly for those consumers who want to watch football matches on the go, tune into news programmes while waiting for the bus or watch the daytime soaps on the sly from the boss.
In all, the mobile TV market, which is miniscule today, could be worth $20 billion (£10 billion) annually by 2011, Sidebottom predicts.
Online, the big draws will be music and gaming, which will account for a combined $22 billion in 2007, with video download services growing quickly as well. What has hurt the nascent movie download sector in general is the small, but growing, selection carried by the likes of iTunes and LOVEFiLM, and the bother of having to download massive movie files over a home broadband connection. These issues should be resolved in the coming years to give the market a nudge. Similarly, Sidebottom believes the frustrating incompatibility issues between music download services will substantially improve, boosting the music download market too.
Read page two.
Published on 05 July 2007
