Mobile Content Owners Struggled To Grow Revenues In 2009, Survey Finds

The Mobile Entertainment Forum has conducted a survey of 100 people from 80 different U.S. companies to gauge how confident they are about the mobile content industry.

While the survey mostly indicates signs of a recovery with 42 percent of respondents expecting revenues to grow by 28 percent last year, content owners and application developers were the least optimistic of the bunch. Jim Beddows, MEF Americas Chairmen said there’s likely two trends driving this: mobile advertising did not meeting expectations and some of their more historical revenues are falling because of the move to more open devices, like smartphones. Traditionally, operators paid for content to encourage subscribers to sign up for data packages, and customers signed up for more subscription services, like ringtones. Both of those sectors have become less attractive as consumers go on the open internet for content and entertainment.

The survey found that only 39 percent of content owners expected revenues to increase 20 percent or more last year compared to 2008. Off-deck aggregators were the most optimistic, with nearly half of them, or 49 percent, expecting 20 percent-plus growth. Beddows: “Originally content was provided through a la carte purchases or subscriptions, but now with the mobile internet, the big expectation is mobile advertising, and it really hasn’t panned out.” He said some of it may have to do with the economy. “The economy will continue will rebound and with that advertising dollars will come back. At the end of the day, mobile will cannibalize other forms of advertising.”

When projecting revenues for 2010, content owners were more optimistic with 52 percent of the respondents expecting anticipating 20 percent or more revenue growth. In 2010, Beddows said MEF will help the industry study additional mobile revenue streams. Initially, they’ll look at the broader mCommerce sector, which includes things like mobile vouchers, coupons and mobile ticketing, he said. The first stage of this report is expected to be ready in the second quarter.