Now the optimistic hyperbolic analysts are getting cold feet. In a recent study by Juniper as reported about here, it is now expected that the effect of the recession will eat into the growth of mobile entertainment revenues. In Juniper’s case they say the growth will be half of what they previously said.

Well in my mind,  we are finally seeing less hyperbole and more realistic estimates. There is a point in the Juniper report that is key though. The cost of mobile data. We are seeing flat rate “all you can eat” offers becoming the norm. This is great to drive consumer adaptation. However, there is a huge conflict brewing here with “all you can eat” packages and increased use of data from more data consuming services like video for instance. At some point the production cost will be more than the revenue. The operators have created a dilemma for themselves in a way. We should not stop at the mobile network operator though. The network infrstructure suppliers have a stake in this as well. As does creative network sharing deals among the operators.

Get me right here, I am a huge fan of consumer friendly business. Not only for the consumers sake, but for the sake of building profitable companies. It all starts with the consumer who pays the bill at the end of the day. We do need cheap data traffic with a high degree of transparency. But no ecosystem survives if one link fails. So here we need to find good suitable pricing models. Wholesale data traffic sold from operator to content provider who in his turn sets a price for the service that includes the data traffic. At CTIA these arguments were elaborated upon by Andrew Bud of mBlox in a very clear way. 

The long and short of it is that we will see growth in mobile entertainment through this recession and beyond. The rate of growth will very much depend on an orchestrated effort from all participants in the ecosystem to help lowering the production cost and allowing for transparent profitable models all the way so we together can deliver attractive services at price points were get mass adoption.