Mobile media revenues to hit $150bn this year

Advertising spend up 85 per cent; consumer spend up 13 per cent.

The stats, from the latest Global Mobile Media Forecast by Strategy Analytics, are pretty staggering – and prove that the wildest projections made during the ringtone and Java games boom were on the money.

Last year, revenues broke through the $100 billion barrier for the first time. This year, consumer spending alone will generate $138.2 billion, while advertiser spend will rise from $6.3 billion to $11.6 billion.

Mind you, the stats don't just tot up content spend, they also include data plans and web browsing - and these two contribute 60 per cent of revs. That's $82.8 billion in 2012.

Content wise, over 23 billion apps were downloaded globally in 2011, increasing by 38 per cent to over 32 billion in 2012. Apps are now the second largest category for revenues.

Meanwhile in the ad space, revenue from display ads on the mobile web ($934.5 million) has been overtaken by in-app advertising ($1.7 billion).

Music accounted for $16.0 billion or 11.6 per cent of 2012 consumer spend, video contributed just 2.4 per cent ($3.6 billion) of total mobile media revenues in 2012 even though usage is increasing dramatically; 108 billion videos were watched on mobile phones in 2011, almost trebling to 280 billion in 2012.

Revenue related to Social Networking content, apps and services is expected to increase by 16.1 percent to $17.6 billion – accounting for 11.8 per cent of all mobile media revenues.

Interestingly, the UK mobile media economy is expected to grow faster than the global market. It will increase by 21.9 per cent to almost £2.5 billion in 2012.

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