[Informa]: Where is the Money in Growing Streaming Video?

A recent research by Guillermo Escofet (pictured), Senior Analyst, Informa Telecoms & Media finds that "Streaming has become the most popular way of consuming video on phones. But not in the way operators had hoped for – through their mobile TV offerings – but through user-generated video clips on free video-sharing sites, primarily YouTube .. No direct end-user revenue is generated from most mobile-video streaming, yet it is the single biggest drain on cellular-network capacity (if all cellular-connected devices are included)".

"Informa nevertheless expects that the opportunity for monetization in video streaming will grow as more paid-for VoD, TV streaming and locker services enter the market. Video-streaming traffic is predicted to increasingly yield more direct end-user revenue, even though most usage will remain free. As fig. 3 shows [below] , revenues will grow at a faster rate than users"

"Some operators are continuing to launch services in this space, however. Spanish incumbent Telefonica, for example, in January extended its DSL-pay TV service, Movistar Imagenio, to mobile via the Imagenio Movil app on BlackBerry devices. Integrated with the BlackBerry’s instant messaging service, BBM, the app streams live content from more than 20 TV channels at a starting price of €2.50 (US$3.26) a month". 

"In Canada, meanwhile, operator Rogers Wireless also extended its digital TV service to mobile with an iPad app that includes 20 channels, streamed for free to selected customers".

See "Video will hog a third of handset traffic but earn less than 1% of end-user mobile data revenue" - here.