Mobile Content on the move!?

According to a report, mobile content is moving off-deck. The consumer survey (presumably for the US market only) found out that today's consumers use a mix of sources for their mobile content, namely the web, side-loading (called "their own collections") and the carriers.

When it comes to watching video on their phone, 35% of the consumers would choose YouTube vs 31% who would go for the carrier's own offering and 28% who side-load.

For music, side-loading leads overall with 48% of the total followed by 35% who bought off the carrier deck.

With games, the situation is yet different: 60% of consumers would only play the games that are pre-installed on their phones.

The report expects this diversification of content sources for mobile phones to increase, which sounds reasonable: just look at what Thumbplay does in the US or Jamba and Zed in Europe! Check out Nokia's Ovi initiative (including "Comes with Music") or Sony Ericsson's PlayNow Arena. Falling walled gardens and a general move to flat-rate data will contribute to consumers looking for alternative shop fronts, in particular as carriers have not always shown to be the best retailers out there - at least not for content... No big surprises then.