Interesting trends need to be reported and mobiles have continued to evolve, growing from mere handy communication devices to talk and send messages all the way to music and now videos.
As the hardware and software for mobiles gets smarter, better functions keep coming up. With larger screens, crispier display on the smartphones and tablets thanks to the iPhone, iPad and the Android devices, revenues for mobile videos have increased year on year and according to eMarketer these will stand at $548 million for 2010.
Those stats are for the US alone and is bound to increase to $1.3 billion by 2014, which is phenomenal.
In its reports the revenues are divided into three categories: subscription, ad supported and pay per download. These can be broken down further in earnings as:
- Ad Supported: $35 million
- Subscription based: $100 million
- Pay per download: $413 million
Each of these revenue models are predicted to double in the next five years with pay per download rising to $901 million, subscription based revenue to over $235 million while ad supported set to exceed $206.
The only thing that is keeping revenues from leveraging every smartphone out there is primarily the fact that data plans and subscriptions costs a lot for users when it comes to viewing videos on devices.
Think of it, if WiFi were to be more readily available at every street corner for free, the ad supported format would greatly benefit both online video portals as well as boost mobile revenue. Now I am not making this up, the ad supported models have grown leaps and bound, given that everyone wants to be entertained without actually paying an extra penny.
Before I wrap this one up, I am just going to be a bit more optimistic and put up my prediction: the ad revenue might actually pass $1.5 billion, once more players step in with high end devices.
interesting stuff