The mobile content market in Australia is set to explode, according to a new study.

According to market analyst, Frost & Sullivan, the mobile content market generated $129 million in 2004.

This equated to an average customer spend of 85c per month on mobile content across all Australian mobile phone subscribers. The top earner was the personalisation market, including ringtones and wallpapers, altogether accounting for 69% of the content revenues. The forecast for growth is strong with the total market predicted to grow to AU$1.015 billion by 2009.

"Our research has shown that the Australian mobile content is on the brink of strong growth, driven by increasing consumer awareness and industry competition to supply new mobile products and services", says Chia Seiler telecommunications analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

The strongest sources of growth over the next five years are forecasted to be entertainment (including the lucrative adult services sector), followed by enterprise applications and productivity services (e.g. personal email and instant messenger services).

While mobile ringtones and wallpapers have been one of the most visible sectors of the market to date, in 2004 the mobile content industry broadened beyond the market of "early adopters" supplying news, information, and productivity services, such as email, to an increasingly mainstream market.

Enterprise applications had only a relatively small presence in the Australian mobile content market through 2004. In part this is a natural reflection of the fact that the drivers of entertainment, personalization, and convenience do not effect the enterprise market to the same degree as the consumer market, however it is also true that there are still relatively few true mobile enterprise and business applications. Stronger growth is predicted for this market as the applications mature and the productivity gains become more convincing.

The inevitable movement of online products also picked up a notch as yet more companies ported their online services to the mobile world.

With respect to the year ahead, Ms Seiler comments that, "One of the largest challenges for the mobile content industry in 2005 will be the establishment of successful business models in a fast paced and turbulent industry".

"In the end it is consumers and businesses that will benefit from increasingly sophisticated applications and services in ways that many may not yet have imagined", says Seiler.