U.S. hot for enterprise apps; U.K. warming to mobile content

Enterprise applications are poised for impressive growth in the United States while the U.K. mobile content market is approaching a “tipping point,” according to two new reports.
Compass Intelligence L.L.C. said U.S. businesses will spend $9 billion on mobile applications by 2011, more than doubling the $3.8 billion forecast for this year. The increased sales will be spurred by a growth in productivity-based applications and devices, the firm said, as well as “a major attraction to service providers to strengthen profit margins.”
The surging revenues represent a substantial opportunity for carriers who can help deliver effective business applications, according to Stephanie Atkinson, a managing partner at Compass Intelligence. “Service providers must get into the mobile applications game by either developing new relationships with software vendors or developing in-house solutions that work across mobile devices,” Atkinson said.
Meanwhile, Informa Telecoms and Media said the U.K. mobile content and services market is “on the cusp” of becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. U.K. users rang up $1.3 billion in content sales last year, Informa said, with only about 20% of all subscribers purchasing at least one item of content every three months.
While half of all respondents said mobile content prices were too high, Informa found that $14 is a rough “optimum figure” consumers are willing to spend per month in addition to voice and messaging charges. Both uptake and revenues will skyrocket if carriers and content providers can find ways to deliver ad-subsidized content and services for several dollars a month.
The price point is “presenting the industry with a dilemma,” according to Informa analyst Nick Lane, “as premium rate pricing for services such as mobile TV could potentially cannibalize revenues from other services within the mobile content ecosystem. The door is now wide open for mobile advertising to subsidize mobile content and inflate the mobile content user base.”