46 Million Mobile Video Subscribers by 2010 - Report

Service provider revenue from mobile video services jumped 317% to almost $200 million worldwide from 2005 to 2006, and is expected to triple in 2007, says market research firm Infonetics Research in its latest report. Similarly, the number of worldwide mobile video subscribers increased more than 300% between 2005 and 2006, and is set to soar to over 46 million by 2010, the report shows. Drivers for this strong growth include increasingly powerful and efficient handsets and the expected analog broadcast signal switch-offs.

"We will continue to see healthy growth in the mobile video services market as mobile operators expand the bandwidth of their existing 3G networks through HSDPA and MBMS, roll out dedicated broadcast networks, and deploy new mobile video service delivery platforms (SDPs). Competition among service providers will keep subscription prices lower in the long term, but that revenue will be supplemented by incremental service revenue from on-demand viewing. We expect to see a spike in mobile video service revenue in 2008 due to the Summer Olympics in Beijing which, similar to last year's World Cup, is a deadline for many operators to get their mobile video services up and running," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and IPTV at Infonetics.

Report Highlights

• Asia Pacific will be the regional stronghold of mobile video subscribers through at least 2010, with 57% of the world total in 2006, followed by EMEA at 31%, North America at 10%, and CALA at 3%
• SK Telecom in Korea and NTT DoCoMo in Japan offer their mobile video services essentially free, a major reason Asia Pacific's share of mobile video service revenue is about half that of EMEA, despite having almost twice as many subscribers
• The number of mobile video handsets sold worldwide nearly doubled from 2005 to 2006 (including video-capable handsets not necessarily tied to a specific mobile video service)
• Mobile video service ARPU (average revenue per user) in all regions increases significantly from 2006 to 2010, tripling in Asia Pacific (from a low base) and more than doubling in CALA

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Posted to the site on 10th May 2007