Extra services, extra charges

The San Francisco Chronicle writes about the expanding universe of mobile services that carriers and their mobile content partners hope will help generate extra revenues.

According to the Yankee GroupT, "nonvoice data revenue from add-on services such as messaging, entertainment and information is expected to generate $5 billion, about two-thirds of which comes from text messaging. By 2009, the market is expected to grow to $15.7 billion, with text messaging accounting for about half of that total."

Lewis Ward at IDC said, "Messaging has been the foundation of data revenue, but as the market grows, messaging will become a smaller component of the total. Content will continue to hold steady, and the other bucket is emerging growth areas, things like video. I can also see location-based GPS services getting pretty popular."

Albert Lin at American Technology Researc questioned how much consumers were willing to open their wallets for more mobile services. He said, "All these industries think they will take a share of the consumer's wallet, and we know that can't all happen."