Innovative content, Govt support emerge as pressing needs of mobile entertainment industry
Nokia has launched its N81 and N95 8GB handsets, even as industry players debate on the role of various stakeholders in helping the industry leapfrog and overcome challenges in the arena of mobile entertainment.
As the industry observers show no bones of contention while going gaga about the future of the mobile entertainment industry, the need to push more innovative content, adoption of a stringent IP mechanism to control piracy, Government’s support for higher bandwidth, and the need to go beyond the traditional approach are loud and clear.
At the launch of Nokia’s N81 and N95 8GB handsets, industry players debated on the role of various stakeholders – original equipment manufacturers (OEM), content providers, distributors and operators – in helping the industry leapfrog and overcome challenges in the arena of mobile entertainment.
According to Pradeep Gupta, MD, IDC India, and CMD, Cybermedia, “The mobile music market that includes ringtones, ringback tones and full tracks, shows promising prospects. It has been a major contributor to the growth of the non-voice mobile services revenues, accounting for $ 227 million of revenues in CY-2006 and expected to reach $ 476 million in CY2007. With evolution of the Indian mobile customer’s needs, desires and demand for better connectivity these services are expected to do extremely well in the month and years ahead.”
Vineet Taneja, Business Director-Multimedia, Nokia India, too was of the opinion that the Indian mobile entertainment market was booming and was poised to grow further. “Content providers, distributors and operators, along with the Government, have to work together to create an ecosystem. Right now, everybody is not pushing in the right direction. Non-regulation of any nature by the Government will just be a killer act. At the same time, the Government should open the doors,” he said, while highlighting on the role of government support for higher bandwidth.
On the future growth of the market, Neeraj Roy, CEO, Hungama, said, “The mobile entertainment market is growing at a fast pace. Music being a derived industry, there is scope of tremendous creativity in digital format. And the consumer is ready to adopt.”
The two new handsets by Nokia – N81 and N95 8GB –are enabled to acquire, manage and share a wide genre of music, gaming and audiovisual content. Having features like large screens, wireless LAN, high capability cameras, dedicated music and game keys, the handsets can be customized, and are loaded with large flash memory.
