Users will spend US$65 billion on e-books, games and other content on their smartphones and tablets by 2016, up from this year’s US$40 billion, according to a research report released today.
The upsurge, according to Juniper Research, will be fueled by tablet users buying games, videos and e-books on their mobile devices, along with easier direct payment methods offered on smartphones by telecom operators.
The research firm says that nearly half of all mobile content revenues today come from music and videos, despite the problems that such multimedia content can cause to mobile networks.
Besides downloads, games and other social networking services could in future offer an alternative way to make money for content creators and service providers, according to Juniper Research.
There’s good news for telcos too. Though much of the revenue collected today, say, for an app, is via a credit or debit card, telcos could in future help bill for these services and get more customers onboard, suggested the report’s author, Dr Windsor Holden.
In other words, the game is far from over for telcos, despite the popularity of “over the top” (OTT) offerings such as the WhatsApp messaging service and Spotify music streaming service.
In Singapore, telcos also seem to be gearing up to be big players in the mobile content game. In the past two months, StarHub has opened an e-book store and also launched a mobile game subscription service.
