Europe : Mobile services will be worth $126bn worldwide by 2008, and will account for almost 20% of total mobile operator revenues, according to a new strategic report Mobile Content and Applications 2003 published by the ARC Group.

This represents a solid growth trend for the mobile services market over the next five years, with revenues more than doubling from their 2003 level.

While voice revenues are forecast to grow at a slower pace, the total mobile market will continue to expand, as usage of services such as messaging, games and music start to penetrate the mass market. 'We see the mobile services market developing from the early adopters and the youth sector to include the wider consumer mass market, as well as business users' says Richard Jesty, lead author of the report. 'This will mean an increase in total revenues for operators, as these new mobile services will offset the likely shift from voice calls to messaging.'

As part of the research for the report, the ARC group conducted an online survey of mobile telecoms professionals worldwide, gaining a valuable insight into how the industry sees mobile applications and content services developing in the future. "The survey confirmed our view of the key revenue drivers for mobile services over the next five years", said Jesty, "with messaging, music and games leading the way". These results underline the forecasts contained within the report, which predict that messaging will generate two thirds of global services revenues by 2008.

Driven by the popularity of ringtone and image downloads, entertainment is the second largest revenue generator, accounting for just over a fifth of total revenues in 2008, as mobile video applications and mobile games start to reach mass-market penetration.
ARC Group forecasts strong growth for the business sector of the mobile services market, with high usage levels and a growing awareness of the value of adding mobility to front office applications. These factors will help to put office applications aimed at the mobile business user in third place after messaging and entertainment by 2008.

Targeting these new sectors for mobile services means that operators will need to create new channels to market, by partnering with systems integrators and consultants in the business sector for example, or developing new self-service retail formats such as multimedia kiosks to reach the mass market consumer. This trend towards a greater reliance on partnering will also mean that new business and revenue models will need to evolve in response to the requirement of a more complex market place.

ARC Group's online survey shows that mobile revenue models are still at an early stage of development, and a number of alternative models are competing for acceptance. Currently, the most favoured models are either purely per event based or are combinations of subscription charge and event based charging structures. As the market develops, there will be more opportunities to offer value-based charging and this in turn will call for more sophisticated billing systems which can offer active rating facilities, and share revenues with third parties.

Third party revenue sharing represents a significant growth area of the market, as network operators, content providers and service providers partner to offer the kind of multimedia content which will increasingly be demanded in the future. ARC Group estimates that this business to business opportunity will amount to an extra $ 50bn revenue stream for mobile content and service providers by 2008.