Consumer use of mobile phones to access wireless data and purchase digital products and services continues to blossom. Mobile data services revenue is up 88% year-over-year for the third quarter of 2006, with revenue hitting nearly $3.5 billion compared with $1.9 billion in Q3 2005, according to Telephia Inc., a mobile communications industry research firm.
Revenue from the mobile downloading of digital content including games, audio, applications, and video and TV hit $727 million in Q3 2006; revenue from mobile video/TV and mobile games accounted for $141 million each in Q3 2006, Telephia says. While the penetration of U.S. mobile video/TV subscribers still is small, 2.3% in Q3 2006, the number of mobile video/TV subscribers doubled to 5.1 million since the beginning of 2006.
Realtone ringtones made up 75% of revenue for the quarter, and for the first time, ringback tones revenue share, 14%, surpassed that of mono and polyphonic ringtones, 11%, which has declined heavily in the past year, the research firm concludes.
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