Report Summary

The market for mobile content services is growing.

Today most of this content is consumed as downloads on mobile operator controlled portals, although this is changing due to the following reasons:

the growth in off-portal content. Consumers are becoming aware that operators are not the only source of content and they certainly don’t care about the on/off portal distinction. In fact, they will become increasingly intolerant of service providers that operate closed garden portals
associated with the above point is the fact that service providers with access to huge content catalogues are going mobile, such as record labels and broadcasters. They are, or will be, looking at mobile search to optimise discovery; for example, a particular music artist, TV programme or video
index initiatives such as dot.mobi, which encourage mobile optimised sites of better quality and usability. Approximately 545,000 names have now been registered with dot.mobi, although a more modest 10% of sites are live
the combination of 3G networks and improved device capabilities means that mobile browsing is getting faster and easier.
operators recognise these factors and are slowly breaking down their walled garden portals and supporting off-portal activity, particularly in Western Europe. This includes measures such the introduction of flat-rate data tariffs that make browsing and downloading content less expensive.

The net result is that consumers have more mobile content available than ever before, which is great. The problem is that finding content can be difficult and inefficient, which is not so great. This is where mobile search can help by making content and other services easier to find, and in doing so maximising the revenue opportunities that are attached to them.