Is The Outlook For Mobile Entertainment Really So Rosy?
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,
And it will be paid for by primarily advetising, and secondarily subscription services.
There have been numerous studies and polls that tell us consumers do not want ads. The problem is the question itself and you will see a similar response when you ask consumers about advertisibng in ANY media. Replace Mobile Phone with Television, newspaper, magazine, film or on-line and I guarantee similar results.
When conducting a poll or study ine needs to be very careful about how and what questions are asked of the consuer. If you are soliciting a level of interest in someting new you will not get accurate results. Go back to earlier innovations and products and you will find that consumers initially had no interest. (The early sutdies of consumer intereswt in mobile data told us that stock quotes, news and weather were more important than entertainment…. I believe this has been proven false by now).
To support this one needs to look no further than major network terrestrial broadcast television. Consumers will tell you (myself included) that they hate the ads but they continue to tune-in. Because it is free network TV has the broadest reach.