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Planet41 Mobi-Venture Ltd.
109 Linkway,
New Link Road,
Malad West,
Mumbai 400 064,
India
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| LET YOUR MOBILE ENTERTAIN YOU |
The mobile phone as an entertainment platform is unique. It is portable, connected and capable of providing passive or interactive enjoyment—not forgetting telephony voice communications! While there are proven examples of products specialising in each of these segments, the combination supported by the handsets holds significant potential. No longer do we consider the handset a voice-only device. Text messaging, music, games, GPS navigation, and mobile TV are all accessible from the one device and have each become features supported by the handset and mobile operator.
As the revenue generated by voice and text messaging has great importance in Indian Mobile telephony, these mass-market entertainment services will also be of significant importance in growing the overall operator revenues.
This might not be such a troublesome issue, according to a new study conducted by Informa Telecoms & Media, in the global market for mobile entertainment services. It states that worldwide revenues for this sector were set to reach nearly US$19 billion by the end of last year, rising to nearly US$40 billion by 2011.
The study argues that the main drivers behind this growth can be associated with the following factors:
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The provision of bundled data packages and wholesale pricing models. |
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The falling cost of mobile personalisation services such as wallpapers and logos. |
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A sharp rise in take up of user-generated services and community sites. |
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The emergence of an increased number of low-cost content providers. |
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The emergence of advertising-funded services. |
Music in particular is expected to enjoy remarkable growth, with revenues rising by more than 75 per cent each year to reach Euro 3.4 billion by 2011.
"The mobile platform has rapidly acquired a significant share of the digital-download music market," says Dr. Windsor Holden, an analyst with Analysys Consulting. "As handset storage capacity increases, as 3G adoption in coming time in India will accelerate and as more cross-platform solutions will be deployed, we will see the share increase."
While full-track downloads will be a point of great interest for the mobile and record label industries over the next five years, ringtones and, increasingly, real tones will continue to rule when revenue is measured. The ringtone phenomenon, which bemused many within the cellular industry, indicated an overwhelming desire by users to personalise their mobile phones with music, and this, according to a majority of market researchers, is unlikely to diminish in the short term.
Small screen
While mobile music will be the revenue generation king for mobile entertainment for the next five years, mobile TV around the world is at various stages of deployment, either being demonstrated, trialled or in commercial operation.
But, as is typical of an immature market, a host of different technologies and business models are being adopted by mobile operators. Stefan Rust, the Asia-Pacific chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum, believes this year will see a battle over which standards will be adopted by mobile TV service providers. "Which technology, what is the business model, what content are some of the issues that we should see clarified during 2008?"
"We'll certainly see the emergence of some very interesting business models for mobile TV, such as services supported by advertising. We should follow the Japanese i-mode model which has been remarkably successful because a games or music publisher can just plug into the platform with the knowledge that it's a very stable and beneficial model. It has spurred the market and enabled the content publishers to make a reasonable return on their investment."
The mobile games industry has gone through a rethink in India. There are several factors on which we have to rethink but it is sure, that India is a promising market for mobile games Juniper Research forecasts that the total worldwide cumulative revenues for mobile games over the period 2006 to 2011 will be approaching US$57 billion, with Asia-Pacific contributing 38 per cent, Europe 31 per cent and North America 22 per cent.
With music and mobile TV adding to this, mobile entertainment is going to become a major factor in the future success of the cell phone industry. The simplistic days of managing a business based upon voice and text messaging will be vital for mobile operators - becoming an impresario is now more important.
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