A sharp fall in ringtone revenues will be more than offset by growth in full-track downloads, streamed music services and ringback tones, according to a new report from Juniper Research which forecasts that global revenues from mobile music services will reach nearly $14.6bn by 2013.
The Juniper mobile music report found that many of the key hurdles to mass adoption of full-track services have been significantly reduced, notably handset form factor, memory constraints, and (in some markets) a reduction of data costs. It said that these factors, allied to the increasing willingness of the major labels to participate in mobile ventures and the proliferation of user-generated content in the mobile space, were likely to drive push adoption and usage levels still higher.
Much of the recent interest in full-track downloads across the industry has been stimulated by the arrival of the iPhone and its successor, the iPhone 3G, which delivered Juniper's Future Mobile Gold Award for Mobile Music to Apple.
"With the arrival of the iPhone 3G it was clear that Apple was heading for this year's Gold Award", said report author and Future Mobile Awards panel judge, Dr Windsor Holden. "The combination of a handset with a wonderful UI and music player and an easily accessible, user-friendly music store is irresistible."
The Silver Award was given to Shazam, for music technology recognition application Shazam ID. Andrew Fisher, CEO at Shazam said: "It's an honour for Shazam to be acknowledged as a company that has made such a mark in the mobile music industry and this award is testament to the dedication of our team to offer customers the best mobile music discovery experience."
The Juniper Research report includes historical, current and forecast market sizing through to 2013, including data on service usage, user numbers, pricing, user spend and end-user revenues together with scenario-based forecasts of the impact of the economic downturn on mobile music adspend.