ABI Research has predicted that global revenue from mobile music (including ringtones) will explode over the next five years. “People with handsets spent $251 million last year on music tracks, ring tones and ring-back tones, compared with $12.4 million in 2004, ABI Research said. By 2011, mobile phone subscribers are expected to spend $9.3 billion.” I don’t know how they got the figure, but it states that the mobile market will be 37 times bigger in five years than it is now.
It’s possible, I suppose — ABI expects most of the growth to come from Asia and other regions with a low penetration of internet-connected PCs, which offer an alternate route to digital music. Once those markets start getting better networks and reasonably-priced music services they’ll probably take off, even though copyright infringing activity is higher.
Carlo at MobHappy opined that most of the growth of the past year came from promotional deals, although that represents songs rather than revenue. Still, if the carriers (such as Sprint which offered 5 free downloads) paid the labels for the promo songs it would still be revenue. If that was the case the growth is unlikely to be sustainable.
I think it is tricky to make predictions on the size of the mobile music market in the future because it depends not only on what the carriers do, but also what the labels do and what online music services do. (via Textually)
Related stories:
–Sprint Eyes Music Subscription
–Watch Me Pull An iPhone Out Of My Hat! This Time For SureĆ¢
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