Off-deck growing, but still a challenge

A small group of players in the wireless industry have been gathering at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif., this week for the Off-Deck Mobile Content conference.
“Off deck, on deck, it’s all a growth story,” Levi Shapiro, director of audience metrics at Telephia, said yesterday morning in opening remarks.
Off-deck content already accounts for a $3.5 billion market annually, he said. More than 40 percent of mobile game downloads, 29 percent of all full-track music downloads and at least one-third of all ringtone purchases are made off deck, he added.
Thomas Gewecke, senior vice president of the digital business group at Sony BMG, spoke rather frankly about the challenges facing the music industry and the digital forces that must be reckoned with in order for it to survive.
“The decline in CD sales every year is dramatic and momentous,” he said. Almost half of Sony BMG’s digital music revenues, which accounted for 10 percent of overall music revenues worldwide in 2006, came from mobile distribution channels.
“Fundamentally we’re committed to selling our content through every available channel,” he said. “No matter what we do we will sell fewer CDs this year than we did last year.”
While about 25 to 35 percent of those revenues come from off-deck distributors, he said “the off-deck economics really don’t work for us. We think there’s quite a long way to go.”
The group of about 60 is convening today for final sessions and panel discussions focusing on billing and payment options, and the appeal for advertisers.