Another analyst’s made another prediction about the mobile music market, saying that Europeans will spend just $640 million downloading full tracks to their mobiles, but that the market for real music ringtones will be $1.2 billion. I have a theoretical problem with these studies that lump ringtone and full-track downloads together, as although they’re both music, they’re significantly different products that satisfy completely different ends.
This prediction is a lot lower than some of the previous guesses we’ve seen, but also makes a common mistake in overestimating the value of the ringtone market moving forward. Already, there are plenty of phones that can use mp3s and other audio files for ringtones. Why will realtones remain a viable market, particularly at current pricing, where users can download full tracks for a fraction of the cost of a ringtone?
European Mobile Music Download Market Forecast
U.K. research firm Generator predicts that European mobile users will spend $1.8 billion on full music downloads and ringtones by 2010. Generator breaks down the market to $640 million for full-track songs and an additional $1.2 billion for ringtones…
I think the estimate is far too high. It doesn’t take into account the effect that iTunes is going to have.