@ FT Mobile: The Predictions Session

I just saw a very large mouse run down the side of the conference hall.
MonsterMob CEO Martin Higginson said the company is investing in emerging markets and has put $200 million into China; he predicted 2 billion mobile handsets in Asia Pacific by 2011. Some stats from rapidly developing markets: 420 million mobile users in China, 86.2 million in Brazil and 100 million in India.
Higginson said at the end of 2005, one billion people worldwide were online compared with two billion phone users. Although many of those aren’t “using their phones properly” (as in not using web functionality), by 2011 there will be four billion mobile users and most of those will use them fully.
On user-generated content, Higginson said he expects that will account for 30 per cent of turnover and that it is essential to make sites sticky by providing a platform for people to share their material. He pointed to the strength of peer recommendation on sites like MySpace and YouTube.
He said broadcasting to mobiles will be limited because people want to snack on content rather than watching full programmes, and later questioned whether T-Mobile could make money from the World Cup because it paid so much for the rights.
— A barrage of statistics expertly delivered by Ralph Simon, chairman of Emeritus and MEF founder; of those, one was that 825.5 million phones were sold globally in 2005 and that’s predicted to rise to 930 million in 2006.
Pop Idol helped boost the popularity of SMS in the US; the market is now about 4-6 months behind rather than two years and around 10 million SMS are sent every month.
He pointed to the success of Sprint’s recently launched $2.50 download service – 300,000 downloads in one week sent simultaneously to the user’s PC and mobile. Major corporations like Disney and Viacom will increasingly look at mobile platforms and cross-media delivery, he predicted.
Mobile penetration by market is interesting: US 69 per cent and Ireland now at 100 per cent.
And new jargon alert: apparently there will be a degree in ‘mociology’ in the next couple of years.
One day I’ll cover a conference and remember to collect the last lines from everybody’s speeches. Higginson’s was: “By 2015 the mobile will be the most important medium channel the world has ever seen.”

This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

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