901am

New Media News Every Morning

US Mobile Internet registers 154% growth in 2007

By

It seems there’s no stopping the invasion of Mobile 2.0 or the convergence of mobile technology and Internet. The latest data from research firm comScore reveals that the “number of computers using mobile broadband technology to access the Internet grew by 154 percent in Q4 2007 versus the same period in 2006.”

cmscore.gif

“Though mobile broadband access is currently used by about 1 percent of the total U.S. Internet population it is poised for significant growth over the next few years,” said Serge Matta, senior vice president of comScore. “As consumers increasingly demand and depend on portable Internet access, the demand for mobile broadband should continue to increase.”

An interesting insight here is the disparity of mobile Internet across different household income. It turned out this is still considered as luxury. Those making at least $100,000 were 37 percent more likely than average to use mobile broadband and those with incomes below $25,000 were 41 percent less likely to do so.

comscore2.gif

Originally posted on March 6, 2008 @ 10:02 am

IDC predicts ringback tones will be largest source for mobile entertainment revenue by 2010

By

IDC forecasts the number of worldwide wireless subscribers and customers to grow by a little more than a billion over the next four years, generating $800 billion in global wireless service revenue by 2011. IDC expects mobile entertainment will account for 5.1% of this total revenue and 23% of all mobile data revenue. The vast majority of this mobile entertainment revenue will be derived from ringtones, ringback tones, and mobile television and video services.

Although there are significant regional differences, worldwide revenue and subscriber and customer totals are poised to increase at least 25% annually between 2006 and 2011. According to IDC, ringback tones will overtake ringtones in 2010 and become the single largest revenue source for mobile entertainment due to a variety of inherent advantages.

The IDC study, Worldwide Mobile Entertainment 2007-20011 Forecast (Doc #210103), analyzes the opportunity for mobile entertainment services, applications, and content types on a global basis. Mobile entertainment in the context of this study is defined as ringtones, games, commercial TV and video services, full-track music downloads, ringback tones, and graphics/themes. This study provides a regional breakdown of associated revenue and average revenue per user (ARPU), customers/subscribers, and, in some cases, volume/units for comparative purposes; describes critical associated trends; and forecasts each of these content/service types through 2011. The four major regions covered are Asia/Pacific, North America, Western Europe, and the rest of the world (ROW).

Originally posted on March 4, 2008 @ 10:50 pm

uVuMobile inks hosting agreement with GlobalTakeoff to distribute Indian content

By

uVuMobile, Inc. has entered into a mobile video hosting agreement with GlobalTakeoff, an aggregator of ethnic entertainment content. Under the terms of the agreement, GTO will utilize the uVuMobile hosting platform to distribute high quality, digital media Indian content to a community of over 2.5 million Indian American households in the U.S. via the Company’s mobile unicast delivery networks. Beginning this month, GTO’s Ethnic Indian content will be available and is expected to produce an immediate revenue stream to GTO and uVuMobile.

Originally posted on March 4, 2008 @ 4:53 am

itsmy.com launches in Italy

By

itsmy.com has entered the Italian market after two months of beta testing. More than one million registered users of itsmy.com worldwide can now make their choice between English, German, Italian and Spanish versions of their mobile community. The next localization of itsmy.com will be a Japanese version.

“Our proprietary mobile content and communication platform enables us to easily localise and customize itsmy.com, but much more important for us is to reach the Italian people with their favourite topics and interests,” Jukka Saarelainen, CTO Gofresh, the company behind itsmy.com, said.

Originally posted on March 4, 2008 @ 4:36 pm

Yahoo! Go 3.0 and other mobile widgets now available to European users

By

yahoo-go-3.gifYahoo has taken another step to strengthen its hold in the mobile content segment with the launch of its flagship all-in-one mobile application Yahoo! Go 3.0 to European countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK at the end of Q2 2008.

Currently, Yahoo! Go 3.0 is available to US consumers and compatible with more than 50 mobile devices. Moreover, these European markets will also gain access to localized services from mobile widgets such as eBay, professional networking site XING, MySpace and European football coverage Eurosport. Yahoo! Mobile Widgets will be accessible via devices that support the new Yahoo! Go 3.0 client or the recently redesigned Yahoo! mobile home page, available at http://mobile.yahoo.com.

“Yahoo! Mobile has tremendous momentum in Europe and we are expanding our leadership with innovative offerings and key partnerships. We believe delivering Yahoo! Go 3.0 and exciting widgets that markets demand will help make Yahoo! an even more indispensable starting point for users, as well as grow value for advertisers, publishers and developers across our mobile ecosystem,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo!, in a press release.

Originally posted on March 4, 2008 @ 12:12 pm