Phone Carriers In Content Box Seat
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The mobile content market in Australia is dominated by the telecommunications carriers, with most consumers identifying with telco brands over the content provider brands a leading research group has claimed.

This continues to enable the carriers to drive favourable revenue-sharing deals with content providers and to increase on-portal revenues at the expense of off-portal.

 As a result, the share of on-portal revenues has grown year-on-year, to become the largest revenue earner in 2006. The strong competition among carriers to increase the market shares of their portal revenues is leading many to form exclusive premium content partnerships, including sporting rights. This is one area where major content providers have stronger negotiating clout, but is also attracting regulatory attention.

 New analysis from global growth consulting company, Frost & Sullivan  The Australia Consumer Mobile Content Market 2006 – 2010, reveals that revenues in this market totaled $576 million in 2006 and is set to grow to an estimated $1.3 billion by end-2010.

 “Personalisation remains the largest content segment, while Information is the fastest growing content segment in 2006, growing by 132 per cent year-on-year”, notes Darryl Nelson, research director at Frost & Sullivan Australia. “We estimate that Information content will represent 25 per cent of the total market by end of 2007”.

 Trends by content type include: realtones saw explosive growth in the Personalisation market; games still heavily dominate the Entertainment content segment; Guides, sports results and listings are the largest revenue contributors in the Information segment and E-mail accounts for 43 per cent of revenues in the Productivity segment.

 The increasing technical capabilities of handsets will play a large part in driving the mobile content market. 3G mobile subscribers now represent approx 13 per cent of all mobile subscribers. Frost & Sullivan forecasts a strong transition by mobile users to 3G services, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38 per cent for 3G subscribers over the forecast period.

 However, limitations still exist in the availability of sophisticated applications. “Location Based Services have long been promised as the most important content development for mobiles,” adds Mr. Nelson. “However, this remains only a promise. Some LBS services exist, such as Sensis’ Whereis, but these are mainly directory, SMS or cell-id based at present, as market penetration of GPS-enabled handsets is still negligible”.

 

Other next generation mobile content services include mobile TV. With carriers now rolling out HSDPA on their networks, TV applications may become viable in the next 12-24 months, handset compatibility withstanding.