The industry hosts a myriad of acronyms and technical terms and there are almost as many platforms available for delivering content as there are types of content itself. Using a back-to-basics style, this handbook attempts to understand the various types of content services that are available and the processes, technologies and business models used to create, deliver and bill the end user for this content.

This handbook is divided into three chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of various mobile content services and highlights the present and future market size and growth for these services.

The second chapter elaborates on the activities involved in creating and delivering content over mobile networks, starting with an overview of the activities involved in delivering mobile content services and then delving into each of the activities by identifying the processes and technologies used to carry out the activities.

The final chapter explores the various business models operational in the industry, and studies some of the key players involved in the industry and their activities.

With the evolution of mobile networking technologies and handset design, mobile services are no longer a simple means of ‘anywhere’ communication. Mobile services are increasingly being used by subscribers to fulfill their information and entertainment needs, and for business workers the mobile handset is fast becoming an invaluable extension of their office environment. The current market for mobile services can easily be classified into two categories – voice services and data services.

Among the two types of mobile services, voice services continue to provide the greatest proportion of overall service revenues for mobile network operators. However, in some of the saturated and mature mobile markets of the world, voice services are increasingly becoming commoditised, under intense pricing pressure, resulting in decreasing revenue growth for mobile service providers. Under such a scenario, service providers are constantly developing new non-voice data services, which offer scope for a large number of mobile applications and value-added services. The major types of data services are discussed and explained in this convenient handbook.

Data services can be broadly split into three categories - including communications services, such as text messaging, etc, and access services, such as online time searching for content or online connection to company servers, and finally content services, such as ringtones, games and other downloads. Content services is the largest category of offerings, such as music (including ring tones), games, videos, images, wallpapers, news and infotainment, etc. These services are primarily designed to entertain subscribers during their leisure time and many such services enjoy high levels of acceptability, especially ringtones and games, to mention two of the most popular services. Novelty, pricing and matching consumer’s tastes and preferences are the key challenges for mobile service providers and other content providers in this sector.

The worldwide market for mobile content services was estimated to be worth USD 17.6 billion in 2005. The introduction of advanced mobile handsets and faster 3G technologies is expected to increase the market for mobile content services to USD 59 billion by 2009. While the market share of ringtones is expected to decrease from 31 percent in 2005 to about 8 percent in 2009, mobile gambling and games are predicted to emerge as the key drivers of the growth of mobile content services in the coming years.