Most of the Revenue in Mobile Content Business is "Access"

2011 was the first year that global consumer spending on media content, apps and services for mobile phones broke through the $100 billion barrier, according to Strategy Analytics. 


But there is an important caveat: 60 percent of that spending was for broadband access. In other words, some $73 billion was spent by consumers for mobile data access. In 2012, mobile data will represent $82.8 billion in spending, up 9.5 percent over 2011 levels.


Apps are now the second largest category for revenues. Advertiser spending on mobile media is expected to almost double (85.4 percent growth) from $6.3 billion to $11.6 billion in 2012, Strategy Analytics says.


That implies $149.8 billion in global revenue in 2012, a 17 percent increase over 2011.

Apps are expected to account for about 19 percent of global consumer spending in 2012, amounting to $26.1 billion, up about 31 percent over 2011.


In fact, it often is the case that much of the revenue in any product category consists of "access services." Consider cloud computing. Well over 33 percent of total end user spending on "cloud computing" is "access," for example.