Mobile Internet: More Messaging than Content

Communications--in the form of social networking--might be more important than content for the developing mobile Internet use. Or at least that's what analysts at Informa suggest.

Mobile social networking is based more on communication than content, the thinking goes. Time and again, communication services have led the way for content and advertising to follow, Informa argues. In the case of the Internet, it was e-mail and discussion boards—not Web pages—that triggered the explosion from early adoption to mainstream consumer use. In the mobile arena, the first really successful data service was text messaging. Short message service services drove mobile data use and they still account for the majority of mobile data revenues by carriers.

According to February 2008 research by Informa, the global market for all current forms of paid mobile entertainment should reach $31.7

billion by 2012. That's a lower forecast than predicted in 2006, when Informa suggested paid mobile entertainment would reach $42 billion by 2011.

In the U.S. market alone, mobile data service revenues reached $23 billion in 2007, according to industry trade group CTIA. Mobile messaging for SMS/MMS/IM/e-mail worldwide is expected to be between $100 billion and $200 billion by 2011.