Mobile video set for growth; 46 million subscribers by 2010

Mobile video is set for boom and the revenues from mobile video services jumped 317% to almost $200 million worldwide in 2006, with that number expected to triple in 2007. According to market research firm Infonetics Research there will be more than 46 million mobile video users by 2010 globally. Thanks to the low costs of SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) and NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM)’s respective mobile video services, the Asia Pacific consumer market will lead with 57% of the world total in 2006. The Europe/Middle East/Africa market will follow at 31% and North America at 10%.

“We will continue to see healthy growth in the mobile video services market as mobile operators expand the bandwidth of their existing 3G networks through HSDPA and MBMS, roll out dedicated broadcast networks, and deploy new mobile video service delivery platforms (SDPs). Competition among service providers will keep subscription prices lower in the long term, but that revenue will be supplemented by incremental service revenue from on-demand viewing. We expect to see a spike in mobile video service revenue in 2008 due to the Summer Olympics in Beijing which, similar to last year’s World Cup, is a deadline for many operators to get their mobile video services up and running,” said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and IPTV at Infonetics.