Sony Ericsson models dominate musicphone market

SEATTLE, Wash March 21, 2007 — M:Metrics, the mobile market authority, today released for the first time its figures on the mobile music market. The firm found that ownership of musicphones (defined as phones that are capable of music storage and playback) is growing rapidly across the United States and Western Europe. The UK boasts the highest penetration of these devices, at 40 percent, followed by Germany (34 percent), Italy (32 percent), Spain (29 percent) and France (23 percent). While the United States lags these markets, with only 17 percent, or 33 million, of mobile subscribers owning a musicphone, it has shown impressive growth in the past year: a 385 percent increase from January 2006 to January 2007. 

"There are plenty of musicphones which can play music, but a small handful of these, designed and marketed specifically for music playback, is accelerating awareness and interest in hybrid phone/music players," said Jen Wu, analyst, M:Metrics. "Predictably, music activity is considerably higher on music-focused phones: for example, 67 percent of Sony Ericsson W850i owners in the UK listen to sideloaded music on their phone, compared with only 28 percent of overall musicphone owners in the UK." 

Sideloading – transferring music from a computer to a mobile device – is the universally preferred source of music on mobile phones by a wide margin, compared to downloading music from carrier music stores in any of the markets M:Metrics measures. The percentage of total subscribers who sideloaded music onto their phones ranges from a high of 12.2 percent in the UK to 10 percent in Italy, 8.8 percent in Spain, 8.4 percent in Germany, 4.4 percent in France and 2.9 percent in the United States. 

"There has been consumer experimentation with over-the-air, full-track downloads, but downloading music from carrier music stores has yet to make a significant impact," observed Wu. "The two main barriers to greater adoption of over-the-air music services – accessibility and fair value – are lesser issues with sideloaded music. The prevalence of sideloading, largely shaped by current usage and understanding of digital music players, shows that the perceived value in musicphones is still in the ability to make one's personal music collection portable, as opposed to a new acquisition point for music." 

The substitution of standalone digital music players by musicphones is increasingly visible. M:Metrics found that 31 percent of those that use both a musicphone and a digital music player in the United States selected their musicphone as their primary music device, while 11 percent use both equally. Continued substitution can be expected, as almost a third of January phone sales in the United States were musicphones. 

In the United States, users of standalone digital music players who also use a LG Chocolate or Motorola SLVR L7 to listen to music are 60 percent more likely than average to choose their phones as their primary music players. 

M:Metrics applies trusted media measurement methodologies to assess the audience for mobile content and applications. As the world's most authoritative mobile market measurement firm, M:Metrics delivers the most accurate mobile market metrics through the world's largest monthly survey of mobile subscribers as well as automated data collection methodologies. Below are the findings of its January Benchmark Survey. 

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