Coming to a Headline near you: 3B mobile phones, 1B cameraphones, $100B SMS revenues

Coming to a headline near you, this year. We have several major milestones being reached by the rapidly growing mobile telecoms industry. Many of our readers were very supportive of the analysis we did at the start of the year, when we analyzed the relevance of the 2.7 billion mobile phone subscriber number that we hit in December 2006. Now I've made short-term projections to see when those milestones should be hit this year.

In May 2007 we'll reach the point of 1 billion cameraphones in use. Note that well over 1 billion cameraphones have already shipped cumulatively since 2001 (was over 1.1 Billion shipped by December 2006) but as the phone replacement cycle is 18 months, and even as many cameraphones are handed down to kids etc, or returned to the resellers and then shipped for example to Africa, India and Latin America, still there is a large amount of older cameraphones that are out of use. My projection says that 851 million cameraphones were in use at the end of last year, and we'll reach 1.24 billion cameraphones in use by end of 2007. So we should hit the 1 billion cameraphones in use by about May of this year. This month in fact. And note, all cameraphones have colour screens and even the lowest resolution VGA cameraphones tend to have MMS and GPRS connectivity, so they can do modest speed mobile data, web surfing etc. Bear in mind that total internet user count went past a billion just only a year ago and over a quarter of the internet users don't have a PC to access the web - their only access is their mobile phone. But I digress.

Two interesting milestones will be reached in September 2007. We will reach 3 billion mobile phone subscribers and the mobile music revenues will reach 10 billion dollars. The 3 billion subscriber number will be widely celebrated but also widely misunderstood. It does not mean that 3 billion actual people have phones, as 28.8% of mobile phone owners have two or more subscriptions (according to Informa, 2007). So we'll only have about 2.35 billion people who own a phone, but more than one in four of those will have two or more subscriptions (and mostly also two or more phones).

The mobile music number is also quite interesting. Last year total music spending on mobile phones reached 8.8 billion dollars worldwide (Informa 2007). The vast majority of that is ringing tones, but full track MP3 file sales to mobiles and ringback tones (aka waiting tones) are both worth over a billion dollars each. For contrast, iTunes sells in the magnitured of about 1 billion dollars in total music sales worldwide. It is important also to note, that while mobile music accounts for over one quarter of the total worldwide music industry revenues, the actual music labels and artists do not earn the majority of this 10 billion dollars. A significant part goes directly to the mobile operators through premium SMS charges and billing charges and the other middle men (ringtone makers etc), so the contribution to the traditional music industry digital revenues is less than half of the total amount. Still, for anyone doubting the possibility to make money on mobile, just around music a totally new industry as big as a third of the "classic" music industry has already been born, and only in 9 years from the introduction of the world's first downloadable ringing tone by Saunalahti/Jippii Group in Finland in 1998.

In November 2007 the total mobile "VAS" data (Value-Added Services) ie content data, excluding SMS text messaging, will reach 40 billion dollars worldwide. Last year content revenues were worth 31.1 billion dollars (Informa 2007) and the content revenues grew by a dramatic rate of almost 50 percent, being vastly larger already than all internet content revenues. In addition to music, these revenues include major elements such as gaming, video content, images, infotainment, browsing, adult entertainment and gambling revenues. And as we've reported, social networking (digital community services) on mobile are already the second largest data service revenue category behind music (source Informa 2006)

And the last big number we should hit very near the end of this year (or perhaps early in 2008) is the 100 billion dollar revenue level for SMS text messaging. The ITU measured SMS revenues for 2006 to be worth 80 billion dollars (ITU 2007) and this service, proven to be as addictive as cigarette smoking, keeps growing at enormous rates. Even Americans are now discovering SMS text messaging with over 42% of American cellphone owners already actively using the service, source CTIA 2006). There are clear signs that in several of Europe's most competitive mobile telecoms markets there are now initiatives to start to edge SMS text messaging prices up, similar to what we've seen in many Asian markets, so even the global price erosion is likely to slow down. My projection has SMS revenues reach the 100 billion dollar revenue mark by the end of the year, but with some margin of error, this might be mid December or mid January, so lets just say its near the end of this year. And just by the historical number of SMS users at 64% (Informa 2006), with over 3.1 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year, we will have 2 billion active users of SMS text messaging by the end of the year. In reality we should have 2 billion SMS text messaging users earlier than that, but for that, I need some updated data on SMS usage levels, to give you a better number on that. And if you are one of the older generation who doesn't use SMS text messaging regularly, please check out this analysis, understanding the biggest data app on the planet: SMS.

But yes, coming to a headline near you during 2007 - 3 billion mobile phone subscribers, 1 billion cameraphones in use, SMS data revenues reach 100 billion dollars, mobile data (non-SMS) revenues reach 40 billion dollars, and mobile music revenues top 10 billion dollars annually. A nice time to be in this industry. Isn't it time for YOU to get to understand mobile as the 7th Mass Media channel?

FREE INFORMATION - for those who would like to understand the basics of the mobile telecoms industry, its current size, replacement cycles, second subscriptions, mobile content revenues, SMS texting usage etc, I have written a concise 2 page Thought Piece on Size of Mobile Industry. Send me an e-mail to  tomi at tomiahonen dot com   and I'll send it to you for free. And yes, there also is a Thought Piece on Mobile as 7th Mass Media if you'd like that one too, just tell me.

UPDATE 2 - SMS reached 100 Billion in revenues in September, see this blog: SMS Text Messaging Worth 100 Billion

UPDATE 1 - 3 Billion subscriber level was hit at end of July 2007. I blogged about it here: Mobile Subscriber Update 3 Billion.

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彼の大学は、彼が大学のチャンピオンである場合、作業は我々のシステムのチャンピオンなので、チェスは思い上がった。ある日、私はどこの子、さりげなく、そして彼の次の3つのチェスゲームを知らないが、結果は次の3つ開いていません。

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しかし昨秋、国土交通省や亘理町などが堤防の拡幅を検討していると知り、修復工事を中断した。国交省は拡幅に必要な川沿いの住宅地で用地買収を進める方針だが、買収範囲は未定。男性は「範囲が決まらなければ、自宅を移転させるか手放すか、決められない」と嘆く。