(3 January 2006 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: The increasing influence of mobile video enabled on 3G networks will drive the uptake of many mobile sports, leisure and information services over the next five years, says Juniper Research.

The global market for sports, leisure and information content (infotainment) is set to grow from its 2006 value of just under $4.2 billion to $9.5 billion by 2011. The largest geographic market is forecast to be in Europe, which is expected to account for 40 per cent of revenues over the 2006 to 2011 period, with Asia Pacific contributing 33 per cent and the rapidly growing US market 18 per cent.

The Asia Pacific region, according to the Juniper Research report, would generate the most infotainment traffic over the period, but higher price levels would make Europe the largest revenue generator.

The report's author Bruce Gibson said, “video has the potential to transform the user experience of many infotainment services, provided the video quality is good enough. The continued roll-out of 3G services globally will provide the platform for the development of high quality video content based services.”

Types of services that will particularly benefit from enhanced video capability will include sports services, services based around TV shows and celebrities, traffic update services, news services and community applications with user generated content. Growth in sports services and services with user generated content should be particularly strong.

Gibson adds, “Sports services are getting repeated boosts by high profile global and regional sporting events. 2008 will be a significant year in market growth with Uefa Euro 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. However the need to acquire mobile sports rights is keeping sports service prices high and these services require high quality and timely content.

"On the other hand community applications with user generated content have relatively low cost content acquisition and minimise much of the complexity of content acquisition and updating. We see growth opportunities in both market sectors for very different reasons."