Frost & Sullivan has released new analysis showing that off-deck mobile content accounted for about 30 percent of the total US revenues, and predicts that figure could grow to 40 percent by 2010. “The U.S. off-deck premium mobile content markets have shown tremendous growth in the recent years, driven largely by the entry of large media brands as well as the relative suitability and ease of operations,” notes Frost & Sullivan Strategic Analyst Vikrant Gandhi. “Direct response marketing (especially short code SMS) has also been a significant factor in the markets’ growth.”
The carriers are still used for billing, which seems to create some problems—there is often a mismatch between what content providers expect as their revenues from sale of their wares in a given period and what they actually get from the mobile operators. (release)