CameraPhones Lead to Less Wallpaper Downloads

M:Metrics is a company that applies trusted media measurement methodologies to assess the audience for mobile content and applications. In short, they establish what mobile owners like/want/download/use and so on. According to one of the company's recent reports, the number of users that own a cameraphone has grown to an impressive 106 million in the United States alone.

In European markets things get even 'worse' with three out of every four mobile subscribers owning a camera phone. While this is great news for manufacturers, it is not at all good news for the mobile operators. The report also shows that due to the high number of users owning a camera phone, the sales of wallpapers and phone graphics has declined.

This is because most people would now rather use their mobile phone to take snapshots and use the snapshots as wallpapers, instead of paying for downloading them from operators and the mobile web. Services that offer wallpapers, ringtones and various content for users are at the moment among the main sources of mobile entertainment revenue.

"While a cameraphone in the pocket of most mobile phone owners may have picked the proverbial pockets of graphics publishers, the penetration of this technology has a positive impact on operator data revenues overall as consumers increasingly purchase photo messaging bundles," said Mark Donovan, senior vice president and senior analyst, M:Metrics.

Picture messaging has constantly been among the most popular mobile applications, with as many as 31.3 percent of users sending photos or videos to other mobile phones, email addresses or blogs. So, while the sales of wallpapers will decline, apparently the use of picture messaging is expected to increase. Whether more picture messages being sent is a fair trade for less wallpapers downloaded, it's pretty hard to estimate. What's for sure is that mobile phone capabilities get improved even further, mobile content providers will have to think of something better and more exciting to offer their customers.

"As the technological abilities and habits of mobile users evolve with the capabilities of the devices they own, new mobile content business opportunities are both created and destroyed," observed Donovan. "As we reported, the proliferation of music phones is also expanding rapidly, so a natural question is how the music industry will respond as these connected creators potentially take a bite out of the ringtone market."