Texting to remain biggest mobile earner

Mobile content and services revenues will treble by 2011

Text messaging will remain the dominant money-spinner for telecoms providers in Europe over the next five years, despite the rise of mobile content offerings.

JupiterResearch has predicted that 72 per cent of premium mobile services revenues will still come from messaging in 2011. In its report, European Mobile Forecast, 2006 to 2011 , the market watcher said that total European mobile content, services and messaging revenues will grow from £14.4 billion in 2006 to £18.2 billion in 2011.

Content and services will grow strongly from £1.4 billion at the end of 2006 to £5.2 billion in 2011. Even so, messaging will remain king while growth in multimedia messaging and instant messaging should offset any decline in SMS revenues. New ‘infotainment’, comprising mobile TV, music and games, will also grow strongly.

Despite the healthy signs, the market for paid-for mobile services will not reach ‘mass market’ status (50 per cent or more) within the next five years. Some services will get there before others, JupiterResearch claimed, but only if changes in the infrastructure are made.

“Mobile operators and new entrants in the mobile space must leverage the peer-to-peer nature of a personal communications platform to create a new form of content creation and consumption” said Thomas Husson, mobile analyst at JupiterResearch. “Entertainment will strongly differ on the 3rd screen and remains to be invented, bearing in mind that consumers’ demand is still skewed toward younger demographics”.