USD2.1 trillion on digital information this year

BUSINESS

By BiztechAfrica - July 28, 2012, 7:50 p.m.

Image: By BiztechAfrica

Consumers will spend USD2.1 trillion worldwide on digital information and entertainment products and services in 2012, according to Gartner.

This amounts to a USD114 billion global increase compared with 2011. Gartner says spending will continue to grow at a faster rate than in the past, at around USD130 billion a year, to reach USD2.7 trillion by the end of 2016.

The USD2.1 trillion consists of what the consumers will spend on mobile phones, computing and entertainment, media and other smart devices, the services that are required to make these devices connected to the appropriate network, and software and media content that are consumed via these devices.

"The three largest segments of the consumer technology market are, and will continue to be, mobile services, mobile phones and entertainment services," said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner. "There are two product classes, which in terms of absolute dollars are significantly smaller, but offer tremendous growth by 2016. These are mobile apps stores and e-text content. We fully expect consumers to more than triple their spending in these latter two categories by 2016."

Mobile services are expected to generate 37% of total worldwide consumer technology spending in 2012. Entertainment services, cable, satellite, IPTV and online gaming, will account for 10% of total consumer spending on technology products and services in 2012.

Gartner predicts that consumer spending on mobile apps stores and content will rise from USD18 billion in 2012 to USD61 billion by 2016, and that spending on e-text content (e-books, online news, magazines and information services) will rise from USD5 billion in 2012 to USD16 billion by 2016.

"Our research consistently shows that consumers are willing to pay for content they deem "worth it,"Sabia said. "However, our research has also found that consumers are willing to tolerate an ad-supported business model in exchange for free functions and content such as personal cloud storage, social networking, information searching, email, IM, person-to-person (P2P) voice (Skype and mobile voice over IP [VoIP]), streaming/downloading video and musical content when accessing the Internet."