Mobile Content Platform Market Reaches $3.4 Billion, Up Almost 20% But Short of Expectations, According to MultiMedia Intelligen

The market for premium mobile content platforms grew almost 20% in 2007,
resulting in a $3.4 billion share of the $18.5 billion of revenue
generated by the mobile premium content market, according to recent
research by MultiMedia Intelligence (http://www.MultiMediaIntelligence.com).
As cellular subscribers worldwide increasingly look for personalization
and enhanced entertainment content on their mobile handsets, subscribers
are continuing to purchase more premium content, such as ringtones,
music, mobile games and video. Mobile content platform companies such as
Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, Ericsson, Motricity NMS Communications and
Qualcomm provide key systems and tools to in-take, catalog, store and
deliver content.

“Many industries would be thrilled with 20%
growth. While the mobile content platform and digital commerce services
companies find it disappointing, much of the issue is out of their hands,”
according to Frank Dickson, Chief Research Officer with MultiMedia
Intelligence. “The ringtone market is
softening while other content categories are failing to live up to
expectations. Additionally, the mobile content platform and digital
commerce services companies sit in the mobile content ecosystem stuck
between the more powerful operators and content owners. The operators
have tremendous power as they own the subscriber. The content companies
have power as they own the content that individuals want. The revenue
distribution among the different industry segments reflects this power
imbalance.”

MultiMedia Intelligence’s new research also
found:

• The digital commerce services market was not quite as strong as the
  content platform market. Mobile digital commerce service companies
  provide the financial systems underlying the commerce transaction
  process. The recent MMI research found that the digital commerce
  segment, comprised of companies like Amdocs, Comverse and Valista,
  grew at slightly less than 10%.
• The transition to an off-deck dominated content market is developing
  in North America. However, a stronger transition is stymied as the
  mobile content discovery and purchase process is still too challenging
  to consumers.
• Questionable and unprofessional market activity by some off-deck
  providers is drawing the ire of carriers such as Sprint Nextel, which
  recently enacted strict guidelines and is enforcing them with
  penalties for content partners. MultiMedia Intelligence sees other
  carriers following suit, not only in the U.S. but in Europe as well,
  in hopes of cleaning up rogue off-deck providers.
• The market will begin to see the emergence of advertising in premium
  content. Video will be the dominant driver, yet other content types
  will see growth as well.
• Mobile music is still dominated by ringtones; however, the growth of
  the category is muted as the decline of polyphonic ringtones eats away
  at the gains made by music ringtunes. Ringtones will remain the
  dominant music category throughout the forecast period, despite strong
  growth in full track downloads, streaming music and ringback tones.

The research, “Mobile Content Platforms:
Mobile 2.0 and Advertising Join the Party,”
covers the software platforms used to deliver and monetize content to
mobile handsets. The research contains five-year worldwide forecasts of
global market revenue for video, music, gaming and images. The forecast
for the emerging category of advertising in premium is included. The
report also presents market share in these areas for mobile operators,
content providers and content-enablement companies. The report provides
a further breakdown of revenue share for the content-enablement
companies by revenue share of music including ringtone, ringtune,
ringback, over-the-air full music track download, and streaming music
revenue by region. The report also contains profiles of major mobile
content enablement platform companies and trends and predictions for the
industry.

For more information, please go to http://www.MultiMediaIntelligence.com/
or contact Ann Howe at 617-547-3641 or by email at Ann@MultiMediaIntelligence.com.

About MultiMedia Intelligence

MultiMedia Intelligence provides actionable intelligence on the markets
and technologies for delivering IP video to the Nth screen. With a broad
"ecosystem-based" perspective that moves beyond the classic "three
screens" of TVs, mobile handsets and computers, we identify the
opportunities in enabling and monetizing digital media on a
multi-platform, multi-network basis.