MEF's Crystal Ball

Industry body MEF had put out its top 10 predictions for the year a few weeks ago (inexplicably missed by me; well it was somewhere around Mobile World Congress, so probably at least excusable), which they gathered from their members and deep discussions around this. They believe that 2009 - recession and all - will be the year in which mobile entertainment (if you count everything in, apparently a $25bn industry) will start to deliver returns.

So now, without any further ado, here are the predictions:

• The ‘iPhone effect' -Mobile applications have emerged as a new content category and the mobile internet will finally come of age
• Greater value and transparency for consumers will help sustain demand in 2009
• Some delay in the proliferation of mobile advertising
• Telcos begin to acts as enablers for the Entertainment industry with services such as billing, authentication and zero tariff data
• The emerging dominance of services that operate at a multi-platform level
• The rise of ring back tones
• Social networking becomes an important driver of mobile entertainment consumption
• 2009 will be the year that mobile video really takes off
• Emerging economies will become an increasingly important driver for mobile entertainment worldwide
• A proliferation of touch screen devices drives discoverability and content usage

Now, now. I am glad to see that a lot of this ties in with "what I have been saying all along"... ;-) But let's have a closer look at a few of the points:

The iPhone effect. Yes, I have elaborated on this plenty a time, so I will only refer to previous posts, for instance here, here and here.

"Some" delays in mobile advertising. Also: dealt with on numerous occasions, and a while ago, too (see here and here)...

And now for a whole bunch of stuff that can, I believe, be grouped, namely greater (perceived?) value to consumers and carriers moving into smart-pipe models. The jury is still out on this, isn't it? Although it has to be said that there seems to be a learning curve indeed. But is this from new-found wisdom or because of the fruity pain from the guys in Cupertino?

Another group: multi-platform services and social networking. I would class the latter as the shining beacon of the former: social networks do one thing. They connect the dots, they are the switchboards of the digital life. And since users per se do not really care on which screen this happens, a lot of them have seen significant value contributions from mobile (e.g. MySpace sees incredible growth rates).

So there you have it...