Research Firms Differ on Numbers for Mobile Commerce

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the mobile digital commerce – well, mobile services in general – is hot and only stands to get hotter. But the degree to which the market will heat up varies among research firms.

MultiMedia Intelligence recently said the market for these services will reach $1.9 billion by 2012. That would be up from $1.1 billion for 2007. It seems like sales ought to be a lot higher than $1.9 billion by 2012, though, given the explosion in video, Internet content and ringtones over wireless devices. And video, MultiMedia even said, will drive most of the new growth.

Juniper Research has higher, more probable numbers for the amount of mobile Web. 2.0 revenue by 2013. That firm said sales will top $22.4 billion within five years. This sounds more on-target, especially when you consider demand in the developing world and populous countries such as China and India. Juniper also included social networking, mobile search and mobile IM in its research, and perhaps that’s part of the disparity between MultiMedia and Juniper results.

“The phone is carried with us most of the time and contains a huge amount of personal data, making it a logical extension for the social network and a host of other collaborative Web 2.0 applications being mobilized,” said Ian Chard, research analyst for Juniper and author of the report.

And as demand grows for mobile services, so will mobile backhaul needs. Infonetics said this month that mobile operators and backhaul transport providers spent $3.7 billion worldwide on mobile backhaul equipment last year. The amount will jump to the high double-digits between 2009 and 2011, the firm found.

“Manufacturers and service providers have had residential broadband and corporate services as the main thrust of their businesses for a long time, and now mobile backhaul makes up a third area that nearly all of them are focusing on,” said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and lead analyst on the report.

Again, demand for mobile content and equipment will correlate to subscribership, which Infonetics predicts will reach 4.4 billion in 2011.

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