Mobile Content Creation Has Big Potential

DECEMBER 11, 2007

Mobile users as walking production studios.

User-generated and shared content will account for one-quarter of the world's entertainment within five years, according to Nokia's "A Glimpse of the Next Episode" report, conducted by The Future Laboratory.

Nokia said that nearly three out of 10 tech-savvy mobile users ages 16 to 35 blogged, and nearly as many used social networking sites. The company also said that these early adopters consumed a lot of entertainment on their mobile phones.

As a result, argues Nokia, mobile users are poised to consume more user-generated entertainment on their handsets in the future.

"From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'circular,'" said Mark Selby, vice president at Nokia."The content keeps circulating between friends, who may or may not be geographically close, and becomes part of the group's entertainment."

Some efforts to encourage and facilitate mobile content creation and delivery are already underway.

MySpace is now available to Helio and Cingular customers in the US, according to a February 15, 2007, article in Digital Music News. In Europe, O2 has launched a YouTube-styled video-uploading service called LookAtMe, which shares revenue with its customers for any user-generated content clips that are downloaded and purchased.

As with services like photo messaging, user-generated content and social networking applications are more widespread in Europe than in the US, according to an M:Metrics study published in December 2006.

Young consumers are leading the way on mobile user-generated content, both in the US and Europe, according to the same M:Metrics research.