RESEARCH: Mobile video faces challenges
February 6, 2013
By Chris Forrester
On the one hand the demand for video-on-the-move is growing exponentially says a new report from Juniper Research. Juniper says the number of users of mobile video calling services is forecast to increase four-fold to almost 160 million by 2017, driven by improvements in both the user-interface and the underlying technology.
However, while advertising and so-called freemium models are beginning to emerge in the mobile video calling market, revenue generation remains the key challenge for mobile video calling players. Freemium models are being explored, but are behind other areas of the broader mobile market, while mobile advertisers have yet to explore the potential of mobile video calling in earnest, states the report.
“Mobile advertising per se is becoming main-stream but the model still needs to be adapted for mobile video calling for meaningful revenues to become available to service providers,” says the report’s author, Anthony Cox. Despite this, key players in the mobile video calling market have recently received additional funding from their backers, representing an implicit blessing of their business strategies.