24 March 2008

ABI Research Finds
Carriers Losing Control Over Mobile Content!

A recent consumer survey conducted by ABI Research shows that today's mobile phone owners use a mix of mobile content obtained from the Web, from their personal collections, and from their wireless carriers.

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.

"Perhaps more with the mobile phone than any other consumer electronics device, content is obtained from a variety of sources," says research director Michael Wolf. "This shows that despite the strong control most carriers retain over the network, their control over the mobile content ecosystem remains limited. The consumer will see more and more options for obtaining rich media in the future."

The 14 percent 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 percent), from their own carrier’s video offering (31 percent), and from video they sideload onto their mobile devices (28 percent).

The leading source of music files on a mobile phone was ripped CDs and sideloading onto the phone (48 percent of mobile-music listening respondents), while over one third of music-listening respondents (35 percent) purchased music through their carriers.

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.

“Perhaps more with the mobile phone than any other consumer electronics device, content is obtained from a variety of sources,” says research director Michael Wolf. “This shows that despite the strong control most carriers retain over the network, their control over the mobile content ecosystem remains limited. The consumer will see more and more options for obtaining rich media in the future.”

In the mobile business, as in the video, music, voice and Internet businesses, closed and walled garden business models are learning to live side by side with the open models of the Web. It isn't clear whether, in the future, all content will flow "over the top."

At some point, if it is possible for consumers to grab the content they want, when they want it--and business relationships with content owners are just as important as physical bandwidth in that regard--then we will see a serious test of the dominance of "packaged" distribution such as cable TV, broadcast TV or telco voice..