This critical article from eMarketer takes a hard look at the recent reports circulating in the press, and their underlying methodology. For example, the Juniper Research report, currently making the rounds, forecasts that total revenues (mobile music, video, TV, gambling, gaming and adult) will exceed a whopping $77 billion by 2011. Informa Telecoms & Media, on the other hand, reckons the market will only reach $38.1 billion in 2011. Why the nearly $40 billion gap between the forecasts?

For one, both companies made some wild assumptions (Informa’s projections are built on a sharp uptake of mobile video and mobile television services, which it estimates will contribute around $8 billion toward the total). But, as the article correctly points out, “it is simplistic to chalk up the divergence as typical of researchers spending too much time with Microsoft Excel and not enough time outside in the real world.” There are just too many open questions at the moment, so any forecast made now will likely turn out to be “an exuberant fantasy or a conservative understatement.”

The mobile industry anticipates eye-popping subscriber numbers. This is mirrored in the huge infrastructure in countries such as India and China, where China Mobile and China Unicom, for example, have sealed deals with the national broadcaster to drive mobile video services and take-up. Meanwhile, India is adding several million subscribers per month, many eager to access Bollywood content via mobile. Against this backdrop, Juniper and Informa might not be so off the target after all. But the major question remains: How – if at all – will this play out for the mobile content industry? No easy answers to this one. However, eMarketer argued, if mobile entertainment is to take off, then it will need to be paid for.