Help me count the ways! How popular is mobile content?

December 6, 2007 6:08 AM

[MarketResearchFilter] Where can I find stats on the popularity of content sent to mobile/cell phones and other handheld devices?

This may well be terribly vague but I'm happy to answer any questions.

I am looking for information on how popular different types of media are on mobile gadgets - specifically, multi-media, I guess. For example, how many people are viewing video, downloading podcasts, or listening to streaming radio on their various handheld devices?

For the purposes of this question, I am not interested in how many people are using iTunes. Music is way outside my market.

European stats preferred but at this point I'll take anything.

posted by DarlingBri to Society & Culture (7 answers total)

Just about every mobile phone service provider breaks out data revenue as a percent of total revenue. Download some annual reports, make some pricing assumptions, and you're almost there.

I suspect that some bright young TMT analyst has done this for the majority of the big European investment banks.
posted by Kwantsar at 7:55 AM on December 6, 2007

Multimedia is a very minor player in mobile content, primarily due to the fact that (proportionally) very few mobile phones have a means by which to view video and music. The iPhone deal with YouTube that uses H.264 video for YT content was a big move in the direction of phone-based content, but due to the fact that Flash is not available for most phones these kinds of uses are primarily a novelty at this point.

Now, I'm not a 100% expert and there may be people streaming audio outside of this regime, but I think the audio side of mobile content is going to be mostly pre-downloaded content. I know my Treo has an mp3 player, but I don't think it streams from the web.

I think I can read a decent idea into what you're sketching out, but for mobile applications the killer is still content at this point. Media not so much, but if you have an information source that people can access and use via internet connections on their phone, that (and casual games) are going to get you a much larger target audience.
posted by rhizome at 8:55 AM on December 6, 2007

Response by poster: Kwanstar, thanks for that idea. Why didn't I think of that?!

rhizome, I have non-music content and I have a target device/platform, but it hasn't been released yet. So I'm in the position of trying to say "While Magic Platform is not yet available, we can surmise from, err, something other than iTunes and YouTube that when a given technology is put in consumer hands, people are actually quite keen to get, umm, stuff with it, and the market might look like this..."

If anyone else has clever ideas, I'm still listening! Cheers.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:40 AM on December 6, 2007

Be sure to read some of the content of the annual reports and don't assume the data revenue line item is all the kind of content you're looking for - a lot of carriers include text messaging in their "data revenue" stats (this is a U.S. assumption, though. European carriers may report it differently).

One wireless industry info source I recommend is FierceWireless. They have European market info and lots of stuff on mobile content. You may be able to get some good industry data there.
posted by altcountryman at 9:52 AM on December 6, 2007

Europe has multimedia on 3G cellphones rolled out commercially. It's very much in demand by the *vendors* of cellphone bandwidth as a means to monetize their capabilities and add a path to advertising revenue. I'm sorry I can't say more.
posted by lothar at 11:31 AM on December 6, 2007

Best answer: Well, given my company is focused exclusively on measuring mobile media consumption in the US and Europe, I'd suggest you check out our website and wade through our press releases. Each month we put out benchmark measures of mobile content consumption and typically also highlight an interesting trend. There's a lot of data that we've made public and it shows up in thousands of news articles every year.

Also checkout MocoNews.

If you still can't find what you need, my email's in my MeFi profile and I might be able to help.
posted by donovan at 5:08 PM on December 6, 2007

Response by poster: donovan, that is perfect - exactly the type of easily digested stats I need to put in this document. And oh my God, there is audience reach data in there, too. Hurrah!

I owe you beer. Much beer. Thank you!
posted by DarlingBri at 6:28 PM on December 6, 2007