14 DAY TRIAL // Certain types of services like sport services, traffic update and news services, as well as services based around TV shows - in the case of which a particularly strong growth is expected over the next five years - will benefit from enhanced video capability. According to Juniper Research, these services are set to grow from the $4.2 billion value recorded in 2006 to $9.5 billion by 2011.
Bruce Gibson commented "Sports services are getting repeated boosts by high profile global and regional sporting events. 2008 will be a significant year in market growth with UEFA EURO 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. However the need to acquire mobile sports rights is keeping sports service prices high and these services require high quality and timely content. On the other hand community applications with user generated content have relatively low cost content acquisition and minimise much of the complexity of content acquisition and updating. We see growth opportunities in both market sectors for very different reasons."
Europe is expected to be the largest geographic market for mobile sports, leisure and information services, which is estimated to account for 40% of the revenues over 2006 to 2011 period, followed by Asia Pacific with 33%, that is forecast to generate the most traffic over the period, although Europe will remain the highest revenue generator because of higher price levels. The North American market will also contribute with 18%.
Report Author, Bruce Gibson said "video has the potential to transform the user experience of many infotainment services, provided the video quality is good enough. The continued roll-out of 3G services globally will provide the platform for the development of high quality video content based services."