The digital content business—music, movies, series, and video games—will generate revenues of €4.7 billion for Spanish telecommunications operators in 2010, representing 12% of their total turnover, compared to €1 billion in 2005, when it represented 3% of sales, according to a report by Gaptel, a group of experts linked to the public entity Red.es.
Analysts expect revenue from digital content in fixed-line telephony to grow from €240 million in 2005 to €1.5 billion in 2010, representing 10% of global revenue, up from 2%. Growth will also be exponential in mobile telephony, rising from €875 million last year to €3.2 billion in 2010. Thus, the weight of this business will increase from 5% to 14% of mobile phone shop companies' total revenue.
Gaptel's calculations are based on an acceleration in the implementation of broadband internet, a deployment essential for users to efficiently access digital content.
The report indicates that by the end of the decade, eleven million broadband accesses will be reached in Spain through fixed networks, which would more than double the five million that ended last year.
Furthermore, the new mobile broadband technology (3G) will add at least 15 million more users. Thus, the number of broadband Internet users in Spain will increase from five million last year to twenty-five million in 2010. Even so, experts warn of the need to widely deploy 20-megabit broadband to enable access to new Internet content services, such as video and high-definition television.