Mobile advertising is the “in thing” right now when it comes to finding a business model for mobile content, and there have been some pretty bullish analyst predictions on how much the market will grow. However, not everyone is so optimistic: Mike Baker, vice-president in charge of Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) ad business, reckons it will take at least five years for the industry to surpass $10 billion in annual revenue, while analysts predict it will be larger than that by 2011 reports BusinessWeek.

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Didier Kuhn, CEO of advertising company ScreenTonic which was acquired by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) in May, thinks those forecasts are incredibly steep and is relieved that ScreenTonic “has Microsoft to watch its back as the market develops. “It will take slightly more time for the industry to grow.” Obviously these people are not saying that mobile advertising won’t work, just that it’s going to take a little bit longer to get to the kinds of figures people are throwing about. BW also makes a compelling argument that it will be difficult for startups in the industry with the big players already having “placed their bets”, and so be unlikely to buy a startup. Likewise, they’ll be competing against the big boys and if the growth of the market is slower they’ll have to make their money last longer. Luckily there’s still venture capital pouring in… It should also be noted that there’s a couple of mobile advertising companies such as Admob which aren’t run by the big tech brands but are doing well enough anyway.