New research from iSuppli has encouraging stats on mobile data usage worldwide. The analysts forecast that revenues from mobile content will exceed $44 billion by 2011, up from the $20 billion expected this year.

Today, ringtones still account for the lion’s share of mobile content revenues, but as growth in this area levels off, iSuppli predicts that newer services, namely mobile video, will take its place. Other entertainment services like gaming will decline in markets where it has already peaked in popularity, like Japan and Korea, while within music, Universal Music is the label making the most money from mobile to date.

Data now represents nearly 20 percent of revenue for the top 20 mobile operators in the world. Those that get more than 30 percent of their revenue from data are SK Telecom, and i-mode adopters NTT DoCoMo and Telefonica’s O2 (although the latter is still running its successful O2 Active portal, too).

Unsurprisingly, emerging markets stand out for their non-messaging data revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR). India, which has been slower than other Asian countries like Japan and South Korea to adopt mobile data usage, will see the most growth in the region at a whopping 40.4 percent by 2011. This is topped by Brazil, with a CAGR of 41 percent—a number that surely must be fueling Telefonica’s interest in consolidating its holding in Vivo.