Currently, the mobile network operators generate a major part of their revenue from voice services and a very small part comes from data services such as SMS. Whereas some data services such as SMS have been growing rapidly, other experiments such as WAP have not found widespread customer acceptance. During the next decade it is anticipated that the gross revenues for voice services will remain stagnant and that the expansion of the mobile industry will be driven by mobile data. It is projected that by the year 2008 the mobile data services will constitute more about 60% of the total revenue of Mobile network operators.
For this growth to materialize, the industry needs to build increased network capacity and functionality as well as applications and services. The criticality of mobile content is driven home by the fact that the ARPU (average revenue per user) from voice services is declining, and mobile carriers need to generate alternate sources of revenue. A good example of a mobile operator that has been able to generate substantial revenues from other than is NTT DoCoMo. NTT DoCoMo’s service is named i-Mode. About 39 million i-Mode users spend money on subscription based i-Mode sites. DoCoMo collects these fees as part of the monthly phone bill, takes 9% commission and passes the rest to the site's publishers.
