The multimedia market is a new, large and fast-growing market area, says Pim Bilderbeek, vice president for European Telecommunications & Networking Consulting, IDC EMEA.

“According to worldwide forecasts contained in the study, the total combined revenue from the consumer and enterprise sectors is likely to grow to more than USD 177 billion in 2011 from about USD 30 billion in 2006,” Bilderbeek says.

The Ericsson-commissioned survey predicts market growth during the next five years. About 750 IT managers in five countries (the US, Italy, the UK, Australia and South Korea) took part, along with 1000 consumers, 200 from each country, who were interviewed about their multimedia use.

“Because we want to look at the forefront of the industry when forecasting future consumer behavior, the chosen consumers were young – about 12-35 – and advanced multimedia users. For example, they all had new mobile phones,” Bilderbeek says.

Today, more than half of all paid-for multimedia services involve entertainment, such as TV/video, audio/music and gaming. The study showed what kind of multimedia services consumers are willing to pay for, and which ones they will not spend money on.

If they had EUR 20 to spend, the survey respondents overwhelmingly chose messaging and e-mail as the services they would buy, followed by video calls.

“While multimedia consumers are willing to pay for e-mail, information sites and social networking on community sites are expected to be free of charge. Those services are paid for by advertisers instead,” Bilderbeek says. “Operators everywhere in the world talk about developing advertising in multimedia, for example through product placements in games.”

Fixed-line consumer multimedia is the largest market, but mobile networks are catching up. It is estimated that, during the next five years, convergent consumer services, which are access-agnostic services including a mobile and fixed component offered by a single service provider over a converged network infrastructure, and which today are worth less than USD 100 million, will expand dramatically during the next five years.

“We think convergent services will reach nearly USD 3.5 billion by 2011, which means an average annual increase of 108 percent,” Bilderbeek says.

The most popular convergent services are for entertainment: TV/video, audio/music and gaming. A unified contacts/address book for multiple devices is seen as the most desirable service.

Twenty-three percent of consumers said they would pay for wireless transfer of multimedia content between devices in the home, and 20 percent would pay for access to all multimedia content from any device, anywhere.

“And many consumers said they were willing to pay for services such as those that monitor and control conditions in the home,” Bilderbeek says.

 The suppliers that are most trusted to provide multimedia services are broadband providers. “Consumers in the survey trust those more than the TV and fixed-phone operators. The mobile operator is the second choice for providing multimedia services.”

The interviews in the survey clearly show the boundaries blurring between work and private life.

There is also a big gap between advanced young users and enterprise IT managers when it comes to using new ways of communicating: only 30 percent of IT managers who participated in the study said they frequently used new media such as blogs and communities, compared with 79 percent of the consumers who took part; the consumers said they used those media channels in everyday life.


Katarina Ahlfort