"The need to increase subscribers average revenue per user (ARPU) expects to instigate operators efforts in promoting mobile content services in Latin America" explains Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Victor Casiano and Program Leader Alex Zago. "The increasing affordability and accessibility of advanced types of handsets also expects to foster the mobile content market."
As voice traffic and revenues reduce over the years, mobile data services expects to be the mobile operators main hope of profitability. Though messaging still forms the major source of mobile data revenues, mobile content services have begun to play a significant role in revenue generation. Therefore, operators expect to increase their efforts in promoting the services, which, together with the increasing affordability of advanced types of handsets, expects to drive the market.
Despite favorable conditions that indicate a very high market growth, mobile subscribers are still unaware of their handsets capabilities and mobile content services availability. The mobile content market is also limited by the fact that not all the mobile handsets are capable of running all mobile content services, especially games and video. Besides, many users still find it difficult to search for the contents they want, especially on wireless application protocol (WAP) portal. These factors tend to diminish the penetration of mobile content services.
"Lack of end-user education in terms of mobile content could hinder the widespread uptake of these services" explain Casiano and Zago. "In addition, the present revenue share model acts as a restraint for the mobile content services markets, as it affects the business feasibility of small application developers."
In order to overcome the mobile subscribers unawareness of mobile content availability, operators need to educate the end users on the handsets' capabilities and services, and also make their WAP portals user friendly. Besides, increasing piracy of content in the Internet is likely to benefit content producers and developers to invest in mobile content as it is a market with less piracy opportunities. This combined with the aging of the market, which is likely to bring younger users and unexplored segments, is likely to drive the market strongly.
Latin America Mobile Content Services Markets is part of the Communications Services subscription and it evaluates the mobile content markets in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. This study analyzes the following segments in the mobile content services markets: mobile music, games, images, video, and mobile information. Interviews with the press are available.
