CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom-European mobile operators should change their pricing strategies to kick start the lagging market for content, including ringtones, logos, games, music and videos, said a new report from Analysys Research titled “Making a Success of the Mobile Content Value Chain.”
According to the report, the Western European mobile content market has had a slower-than-expected start with revenues of less than $3.1 billion last year, but it has room to grow.
“A key short-term priority is addressing the inadequacy of pricing structures,” said Alex Zadvorny, the report’s author. “The prevailing approaches to pricing are far too complex and difficult for the customer to understand. In some cases a subscriber incurs three types of charges in order to access one piece of mobile content.
“Western European operators should either follow the Japanese operators’ approach or strive to develop affordable flat-rate content packages similar to those in the satellite TV industry,” said Zadvorny.
If operators quickly address pricing and other issues, mobile content revenues in Western Europe could account for more than 10 percent of the total mobile services market by 2009, said the report.
