China Mobile Has Set Eyes on the Great Market Opportunity of Wireless Music.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c29854) has announced the addition of The Mobile Music Market in China 2005 to their offering.

Mobile music is also called wireless music, it is a kind of service that plays music on mobile phones by downloading from telecommunication networks. Mobile music includes mobile phone ring tones, color ring back tones and mobile phone music.

Mobile phone ring tong and color ring back tone are well-known Mobile Value-added services, while mobile phone music is an emerging service with great market potential in the 3G Era.

There is an inherent relationship between mobile phone ring tones, color ring back tones and mobile phone music. In 2005, the market scale for mobile phone ring tones will reach 2.8 billion Yuan, which will be almost reaching saturation point. The Color ring back tone market will exceed the mobile phone ring tone market with a market scale of 5 billion Yuan by the end of 2005. However, from 2007, the color ring back market will start to decline. Due to the high market demand, starting from 2006, the mobile phone music market will show a high growth, and its market scale will reach as high as 8 billion Yuan.

The fast growing mobile phone ring tone market created the new profit increase point for record companies. Mobile phone ring tones have occupied 10% sales of the global music market. According to the newspaper The Economist, the sales of mobile phone ring tones have exceeded music CD sales in many western countries. In 2003, the cost charged by music product publishers for mobile phone tones adapted from music products has reached as much as 50 million US dollars to 70 million US dollars.

China Mobile has set its eyes on the great market opportunity of wireless music; the company is working hard on the aspects of content and mobile terminals. China Mobile has cooperated with EEG Music and M Dream China to develop the business of mobile phone ring tone download in May, 2004. The company is also trying hard to get music resources from record companies directly.

China Mobile has also cooperated with A8 Limited and MTV China to develop the Chinese wireless music market in April 2005. At the beginning of May, China Mobile launched the music channel on the platform of M-Dream; soon after it launched the China Wireless Music Rank according to the quantity of songs downloaded.

Along with the strategy of long-term music mobile phone customization, and the control of music content, by 2008, China Mobile is expected to occupy 60% of music mobile phone market shares in China.

As the second biggest mobile phone carrier in China, China Unicom also showed a great interest in mobile music. .

Mobile phone music market trends in China

The year 2005 is the starting point for mobile phone music development in China. China Mobile has launched the service called Wireless Music, and China Unicom also launched the service called Music Street, however, both of those services are not real mobile phone music services according to the strict criteria, in fact, the service of Wireless Music is a kind of color ring back tone application, and the service of Street Music is more like IVR.

According to the mobile phone music development in Europe, Japan and South Korea, it developed along with the 3G networks, and became the killer service gradually. In 2006, 3G networks will start distribution in China, therefore, mobile phone music will show a fast growth in the year, and its market scale is expected to reach 7.3 billion Yuan in 2007.

Companies mentioned in the report:

--Universal Music Group

--Sony BMG 

--EMI Group

--Warner Music

--Rock Mobile

--Sina

--TOM

--A8 Limited

--Tencent

--Linktone

--Longtech

--KongZhong

--China Mobile

--China Unicom

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c29854