Crib Ornament says everyday a new article claims to have the crystal ball on the future of the mobile industry:
Take a look at the ones I found in about 2 minutes:
- Mobile worth $10 billion by 2010
- Mobile worth $3 billion by 2008
- Mobile worth $14 billion in 4yrs (2011)
- Mobile apps worth $66 billion over 5 years
- Mobile games worth 11.2 billion by 2010
- Mobile entertainment worth $76 billion by 2011
- Mobile social networks worth $13.1 billion by 2011
- Mobile content to reach $43 billion by 2010
- Senza Fili Consulting predicts 54 million WiMax subscribers by 2012.
What does this tell us? Absolutely nothing… except that there are uber-tenacious forecasters who think they are smart enough to pinpoint a market to a decimal point (who do they think they are, Warren Buffet?).
Om Malik notes at the end of first quarter 2007, the total number of broadband subscribers was close to 300 million, according to Point Topic. Thanks to Eastern Europe and China, the broadband subscriber base is growing at much faster clip that most imagined.
Leichtman Research Group found DSL subs in the United States totaled 20.17 million last year while cable broadband subs totaled 45.94 million.
Some 53% of all US households now subscribe to a broadband at home, according to Leichtman Research. Broadband services now account for about 72% of all home Internet subscriptions - compared to 60% last year. But just 45% of households with annual incomes below $30,000 subscribe to an Internet service at home - compared to 92% of households with annual incomes above $75,000.
AT&T’s U-verse, with a planned investment of approximately $6 billion, is currently passing 3 million homes in 21 markets. AT&T will offer U-verse to 18 million homes by the end of 2008 in the original 13 state region that SBC served with additional homes in the old BellSouth region.
In September, Verizon put a price tag on its ambitious fiber project which includes FiOS TV; $22.9 billion to rewire more than half of its copper telephone network.
Verizon said it expects to offset the cost with $4.9 billion in savings through 2010 due to the fiber network’s reduced maintenance costs. FiOS Internet service is available in parts of 16 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Verizon is constructing a passive optical network in which the optical signal is optically split up to 32 ways from neighborhood hubs.
Leichtman Research Group, Nielsen//NetRatings, Point Topic and IT Facts have additional statistics.
DailyWireless has more Market Metrics. Fantasy or not.
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