Infonetics has released a report (Mobile Video Devices, Services, and Subscribers) predicting that “mobile video services around the world is set to skyrocket from $46.2 million in 2005 to $5.6 billion in 2009, a staggering 11,997% jump in 5 years”...of course, this is dependent upon the industry resolving a number of quality and content-related problems, but the analyst firm thinks the industry is doing that.
Unsurprisingly Infonetics’ thinks sports will serve as “a major content anchor” for most mobile video services, but they’re one of the few analysts I’ve come across who think that exclusive deals are a good idea. “Exclusive coverage will help drive advertising revenue, subscriber growth, and support for other prime time programming.”
Half the subscribers are expected to be in Asia, which is a pretty safe bet.
Comparing this with other predictions…Infonetics expects there to be 336 million mobile video handsets worldwide in 2009, whereas IMS predicted 446 million watching TV on their phones by 2011—I would say Infonetics is more bullish. Juniper has predicted a global mobile TV market of $11.7 billion by 2010—I would say Juniper is more bullish in this instance, although with the growth rates projected a doubling of the market in one year could almost be seen as a recession…
I think for this to happen the problems are going to have to be sorted out in the next couple of years, so we’ll know soon enough how good these predictions are.
Related stories:
—US Mobile TV/Video Market To Expand—IDC
—MEF Criticises Proposed “Television Without Frontiers” Amendment
—3 Italia Pleased With 111K Mobile TV Viewers