Forecast: Mobile content and services $150B by 2011

A new report issued by Informa Telecoms & Media anticipates dramatic growth for the mobile content and services market despite declining ARPU numbers for carriers. According to Informa, SMS and related messaging applications will still account for more than half of projected mobile data revenues by 2011, generating $93 billion globally--while multimedia services including music, games, TV and adult content will grow to about $38 billion, user-generated content will blossom into a $13 billion market.

"We may not be buying as many games, full-track downloads or multimedia messages as operators would like, but we are spending a huge amount of time sending and reading text messages and organizing our lives using the phone's address book, clock, alarm and calendar functions," Informa senior analyst Daniel Winterbottom said in a prepared statement. "Over time, users will warm to other data services as well. The mobile web is a prime example: WAP failed to take off when it was first launched, but five years on, more and more users have become comfortable with accessing news or other information on their mobile phones."

For more on the Informa report:
- read this release