How badly will the recession hit mobile? One analyst firm has halved its two-year forecast for growth in global mobile entertainment revenue, from $26 billion to $13 billion. Mobile TV will be hardest hit, followed by music and UGC.
UK telco analyst Juniper Research‘s Dr Windsor Holden says the downturn will mean “reduced adoption of” and “churn away from” subscription mobile content, while “the frequency of ad hoc, one-off downloads of games and music would also be adversely affected”.
But Holden says the industry is as much to blame as the economy. Despite falling data prices, most mobile users are prepaid customers who want to sample the mobile web before buying a bundle – for these users, “data costs are so high that they act as a disincentive to such initial usage”, said Holden, who also criticised the “slower deployment of content services”. The Mobile Entertainment Forum said it “concurs” with the “growth factors” Juniper points to.