Mobile content

Mobile content is any type of media which is viewed or used on mobile phones, like ringtones, graphics, games and movies. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid 1990s, the significance of the devices in everyday life has grown accordingly. Owners of mobile phones can now use their devices to make calendar appointments, send and receive text messages (SMS), listen to music, watch videos, shoot videos, view Microsoft Word documents, and so forth. The use of mobile content has grown accordingly.

Content viewed on mobile phones

Mobile music

Mobile music is any audio file that is played on a mobile phone. Mobile music is normally formatted as an AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) file or an MP3, and comes in several different formats. Monophonic ringtones were the earliest form of ringtone, and played one tone at a time. This was improved upon with polyphonic ringtones, which played several tones at the same time so a more convincing melody could be created. The next step was to play clips of actual songs, which were dubbed Realtones. These are preferred by record labels since realtones require the payment of a "mechanical royalty" as well as a publishing royalty, whereas monophonic and polyphonic ringtones only require the payment of the publishing royalty. Some companies promote covertones, which are ringtones that are recorded by cover bands to sound like a famous song. Recently Ringback tones have become available, which are played to the person calling the owner of the ringback tone. Voicetones are ringtones that play someone talking or shouting rather than music, and there are various of ringtones of natural and everyday sounds. Realtones are the most popular form of ringtones. As an example, they captures 76.4% of the US ringtone market in the second quarter of 2006, followed by monophonic and polyphonic ringtones at 12% and ringback tones and 11.5% -- but monophonic and polyphonic ringtones are falling in popularity while ringback tones are growing. This trend is common around the globe.

As well as mobile music there are full track downloads, which are an entire song encoded to play on a mobile phone. These can be purchased and bought over the mobile network, but data charges can make this prohibitive. The other way to get a song onto a mobile phone is by "side loading" it, which normally involves downloading the song onto a computer and then transferring it to the mobile phone via Bluetooth, infra-red or cable connections. It is possible to use a full track as a ringtone.

Mobile music is becoming an integral part of the music industry as a whole. In 2005 the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said it expects mobile music to generate more revenues that online music before the end of that year. In the first half of 2005 the digital music market grew enough to offset the fall in the traditional music market -- without including the sale of ringtones, which still makes up the majority of mobile music sales around the globe.

Mobile images

Mobile images are used as the wallpaper to a mobile phone, and are also available as screensavers. On some handsets images can also be set to display when a particular person calls the users.

Mobile games

Mobile games are applications that allow people to play a game on a mobile handset. The main categories of mobile games include Puzzle/Strategy, Retro/Arcade, Action/Adventure, Card/Casino, Trivia/Word, Sports/Racing, given in approximate order of their popularity.

Several studies have shown that the majority of mobile games are bought and played by women. Sixty-five percent of mobile game revenue is driven by female wireless subscribers. They are the biggest driver of revenue for the Puzzle/Strategy category; comprising 72 percent of the total share of revenue, while men made up 28 percent (see Table 2). Women dominate revenue generation for all mobile game categories, with the exception of Action/Adventure mobile games, in which men drive 60 percent of the revenue for that category.

Mobile video

Mobile video comes in several forms.

Video downloads

Video downloads are short files which are downloaded over the mobile network to a handset when the user wants it. Once downloaded, these videos can be watched even when there is no reception.

Some services that offer short video clips stream the files instead of having them download to the handset. This increases the providers control of the content but reduces the quality of the video as the video must be streamed over whatever connection is available at viewing time.

Streaming TV

Mobile video also comes in the form of streaming TV over the mobile network, which must be a 2.5G or 3G network. This mimics a television station in that the user cannot elect to see what they wish but must watch whatever is on the channel at the time.

There is also mobile broadcast TV, which operates like a traditional television station and broadcasts the content over a different spectrum. This frees up the mobile network to handle calls and other data usage, and because of the "one-to-many" nature of mobile broadcast TV the video quality is a lot better than that streamed over the mobile networks, which is a "one-to-one" system.

The problem is that broadcast technologies don't have a natural uplink, so for users to interact with the TV stream the service has to be closely integrated to the carriers mobile network. The main technologies for broadcast TV are DVB-H, DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) and MediaFLO,

Bluetooth

Modern phones come with Bluetooth. This allows video to be sent from phone to phone over Bluetooth, which has the advantages that there is no data charge.

Locally created content

Modern camera phones can create their own content, which can be viewed on the phones. See section below on Mobile created content.

Mobile created content

Modern mobile phones can take photographs with a few million pixels. The Nokia N93 can create videos of comparable resolution to a DVD, storing up to 90 minutes on the phone memory.

International trends

Since the late 1990s, mobile content has become an increasingly important market worldwide. The Japanese, followed closely by the Europeans, are heavy users of their mobile phones and have been attaining custom mobile content for their devices for years. In fact, mobile phone use has begun to exceed the use of PCs in some countries. In the United States and Canada, mobile phone use and the accompanying use of mobile content has been slower to gain traction.

On current trends, mobile phone content will play an increasing role in the lives of millions across the globe in the years ahead, as users will depend on their mobile phones to keep in touch not only with their friends but with world news, sports scores, the latest movies and music, and more.

Further reading

• "The Problem With Free Mobile Content". MocoNews. 2006-04-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Richard Martin (2006-06-27). "Mobile Content, No Lifeline". Unstrung. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)