14 DAY TRIAL // A new report issued by IDC reveals that there are currently more than 229 million U.S. wireless subscribers who are spending an average of $6.00 per month on data services. Customer spending on data services contributed with a total of $4.1 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2006. According to IDC, messaging contributed nearly half the data revenue, while business- and consumer-oriented services and content constituted about 40%, and content and simple application downloads came to about 12%. Of the top ten wireless carriers, IDC research indicates that Verizon is the new leader on data spending-per-customer basis.
"Our research found that at $7.27 spent per-customer on data services in 3Q06, Verizon Wireless became the new market leader among the national operators, eclipsing Sprint Nextel, the long-time leader in this metric at $7.15," said Julien Blin, research analyst for IDC's Wireless and Mobile Communications program. "Among the national carriers, Verizon Wireless is today the overall leader in data services in terms of total wireless data revenue, data percentage of ARPU, and data spending, although Sprint Nextel and the other national carriers continue to lead in select services."
Within the paid downloads category, ringtones remain the most popular type of content bought and downloaded onto mobile handsets, with master track tones being the predominant type of ringtone sold. The IDC research shows that about 20% of U.S. subscribers currently purchase at least one ringtone every quarter, making ringtones the leading contributor to paid download revenue. IDC predicts that the total volume of ringtone sales in the U.S. market will approach the 1 billion mark by 2010, up from about 430 million in 2006.