September 13, 2006
eMarketer: Mobile Data Services Projected to Grow to $37.5 Billion
By Robert Liu, TMCnet Executive Editor
Mobile data services such as news and gaming are not making a significant impact but are expected to make huge contribution by the end of the decade, according to the latest report from market research firm eMarketer.
As wireless voice services stagnate in the coming years due to commoditization, carriers will increasingly rely on data services, especially messaging, for revenue growth. Non-voice services are projected to grow from $5.4 billion this year to $37.5 billion by the year 2010.
Source: eMarketer
And while over half of the revenue base is currently coming from messaging, information services such as entertainment and gaming are expected to accelerate in its importance. Within the messaging category, texting accounts for the lion’s share compared with other services like email or instant messaging.
“We agree that texting will likely remain the dominant messaging revenue generator,” wrote James Belcher, senior analyst, at eMarketer in the report.
But the U.S. continues to lag behind other geographic regions such as the Asian market, which already reports a strong uptake in non-voice wireless services. While there is no simple answer to explain that phenomenon, eMarketer does identity the most significant problem to be the so-called “walled garden” approach to mobile applications deployment.
In order to stress their competitive advantage, each carrier has created separate and mutually incompatible platforms for the sale and distribution of non-voice services. “So, despite similar offerings, each carrier generally has its own system for selling games, music and other applications, enforcing customer loyalty but restricting growth. This has held back not only music and other traditional multimedia, but mobile gaming as well,” Belcher wrote.
The survey did not include eMarketer’s projections for mobile TV.
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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.
