Mobile Entertainment: The Future’s Getting Nearer

Moderator Neeraj Roy, CEO, Hungama.com, initiated the discussion on ‘Mobile Entertainment’ on Day Three of Frames. He said, “Mobile entertainment today is becoming a rather important component in the business of entertainment. The mobile entertainment business last year globally was $12.5 billion. Over the next three to four years, there is significant amount of effort seen going towards enhanced data-driven revenues. It is estimated that the data business over the next four years will be a $124 billion business, out of which, mobile entertainment itself is estimated to be a $42 billion business.”

Roy pointed out that the worldwide theatrical receipts of Holywood stood at $9.2 billion, the video gaming business was at $13 billion, or somewhere around that figure. He noted that a very interesting growth had happened in a limited span of time, and broke down the segment into the four key vectors - music and its derivates; imagery and its derivates; video; and games.

Stefan Rust, Director, Corporate Development & Alliances, Sun Microsystem Inc, and Chairman, Mobile Entertainment Forum Asia, asserted that the above numbers would only be realised if everyone in the value chain worked together and had the consumer in mind when they do work together.

“I mean, $40 billion growing from $10 billion or $15 billion is a two-fold increase over the next four years, and to achieve that, all the players will have to work together. There are large industries that are coming together and we need to find out ways to melt them together, find ways to get large content houses to work together with engineering resources to understand what the devices can do, what the carriers can build for, how they can charge for what the consumers are willing to pay for, and to do that in the most consumer friendly fashion. There is an experience that needs to be delivered to the consumer,” said Rust.

Another speaker contended that slowly but steadily, the convergence of consumer electronics and consumer entertainment was happening. Jawahar Kanjilal, Director, Rich Media, Music & Games Business Programmes, Multimedia, Asia Pacific, Nokia, underlined the great opportunity in the opening up of personal entertainment. While in 2004, Nokia sold 10 million music-enabled handsets, in 2005, the number was 47 million. In 2006, the company expected to sell 80 million of these handsets.

“The pace of change is tremendous and this empowers the end users to create content on the fly. This opens a new distribution medium for music companies on the mobile, and for the broadcasting of events, and photo albums, and this is where we all are headed in terms of capabilities in your pocket,” explained Kanjilal.

Sharing his perspective, Tata Teleservices’ Content & Applications, Vice-President, Pankaj Sethi, said, “There has to be recognition of two things - we need to understand what the consumer needs and then which devices will make that happen. The next leap that was seen to be the future has now become a thing of the past, and the future has become a reality.

The next leap of growth will be the high-end customers. Increasingly, we are seeing and will see that the higher-end customers will be catered to with high-end, and high-technology mobile handsets will have to be made - but without ignoring the lower-end customers.”

If talk is about mobile entertainment, can gaming be far behind? The significance of this genre of interactivity was touched upon in the session by Vishal Gondhal, CEO, Indiagames. Evoking strong faith in the industry, he said, “Gaming will be the biggest source of entertainment, and this really is a no-brainer. In fact, gaming is even bigger than the US Box Office collection. Though prices are currently an issue, higher priced games will be received much better in times to come. For all this to happen in India, Bollywood will lend itself to games, and there will also have to be creative content to take care of the huge demand.”

The Three Cs of developing content for mobile entertainment was a concept introduced by Vishal Gupta, Director, Product Technologies, Qualcomm India and SAARC. Gupta explained that these were ‘consumer experience’, ‘content is king’, and ‘concurrence’ between the mobile players.

As the last speaker in the session of mobile marketing, Arun Gupta, CEO, Mauj, said, “Mobile entertainment opportunity per se is the biggest media opportunity of this country. And mobile screens are slowly emerging as ‘the third’ screen. To overcome the various challenges, India and overseas players will need to work on them together.”

Having a good time with the constant companion - the mobile phone - is an opportunity that’s getting bigger for everyone in the business, and everyone in the audience. Among the various new platforms and techniques that one can expect in an industry that’s threatening to boom, mobile TV and visual radio top the charts. And why not? Everything’s possible, and we’re game.