August 8, 2005
Forecasting Asia's Mobile Music Market
An interesting article from Variety dated August 3rd, on Asia's online and mobile music market, which is now free of charge and acessible.
Excerpts related to mobile phones and music
... Analysts forecast not only a boom in legal online music sales but that mobile music sales in Asia will exceed physical sales by 2008. As usual, South Korea leads the way.Its $3 billion market has already seen mobile and online music overtake CD sales.
... Key to Asia's boom, and a likely indicator of things to come in other territories, is the rise of mobile music and the diversification of the ways in which music can be sold.
In Asia, music is being licensed for people's online avatars, as backgrounds to messengers and for gaming platforms. This is not present in the U.S., and new business models are emerging," said Soundbuzz CEO Sudhanshu Sarronwala.
... In Japan 2 billion polyphonic ringtones were downloaded in 2004. By the first quarter this year telco China Mobile had signed up over 40 million subscribers to "color ring back tones.
... Korean phone companies forecast sales this year of 10 million MP3-equipped handsets -- a figure five times higher than the number of stand-alone music players.
... Other technological advances are expected to blur the distinction between players and phones. Cell phones with 4 gigabyte storage capacity are already in the market in some Asian territories, providing over 50 hours of music-playing capacity.
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