The UK's annual spend on mobile content is set to reach £1bn for the first time in 2007, according to research released by GfK M², the specialist marketing services company aimed at monitoring mobile content sales. This is an increase of over £100mn year-on-year, an increasingly sizeable chunk of the £15bn UK mobile telephony market. GfK M² reports that people are increasingly downloading content straight from their phones, rather than from internet sites. Twice as much money is spent on mobile entertainment bought via a WAP site (55%) than over the internet (25%). GfK M² reports that UK consumers are now spending more on downloading games to their mobile phones than on ringtones, music or video. In the year to March 2007, consumers spent £83mn on mobile games, compared to £76mn on ringtones and just £23mn on music.  GfK M²'s figures reveal that the mobile gaming market is worth nearly four times the current market value of full music tracks, and eight times the current video download market. Driving the boom in mobile content is the availability of technology. In the UK, 90% of phones now have Java functionality, 45% have a memory card slot and nearly half have USB compatibility. In addition, GfK M² can confirm that the 3G market is now starting to take off. In the last year, 15% of phones bought in Europe were 3G. In the first quarter of 2007, nearly 25% of all phones sold in the UK were 3G. GfK M²'s figures show Britain is also catching up with Japan, traditionally the world's leader in new technology. In Japan 78% of mobile phones have MP3 functionality, in Britain this is already 75% and growing.
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