ABI Research: Mobile operators losing control over mobile content

According to ABI Research's recent survey titled "Mobile Content Survey Results", today's mobile phone owners use a mix of mobile content obtained from the Web, from their personal collections, and from their mobile operators. As an example, today's mobile consumer is more likely to watch a video from YouTube on his or her phone than a video from the carrier's own service, but is more than twice as likely to get ringtones from the carrier than from any other source.

Michael Wolf, research director at ABI argues that this shows that despite the strong control most carriers retain over the network, their control over the mobile content ecosystem remains limited.

Highlights:

• 14% of respondents who said they use their phone to watch video was split nearly evenly between those who watch video from websites such as YouTube (35%), from their own carrier's video offering (31%), and from video they sideload onto their mobile devices (28%).
• When it comes to music, the leading source of music files on a mobile phone was ripped CDs and sideloading onto the phone (48% of respondents), while over one third of music-listening respondents (35%) purchased music through their carriers.
• Lastly, pre-loaded content such as games were some of the most popular forms, as six in ten mobile gamers said they only play the games that came with the phone.

"We expect to see increased content acquisition directly to the phone from the Web. And despite a loosening of control over content delivery to consumers, we believe the carriers will ultimately benefit as they open up their networks and handset platforms and look into taking advantage of increased advertising-supported content delivery," Wolf concluded.

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