According to a new report - The Mobile Internet Economy in Europe - by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading management consulting firm, the mobile Internet economy generates annual revenues of EUR 92 billion and a consumer benefit of about EUR 770 billion in the countries of the EU5 -- Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and Spain. The segment which comprises 3G, 4G, smartphones, mobile operating systems, apps and services is expected to create 250,000 jobs in these five countries.
BCG predicts that by 2017, EU5 mobile Internet revenues will have more than doubled to about EUR 230 billion -- representing an annual growth rate of 25 percent, comparable to the growth of those revenues in China and the U.S. The single largest contributor to growth will be the apps, content, and services component of the ecosystem, driven by the rapid expansion of mobile shopping and advertising.
BCG noted that competition occurs at every layer of the mobile ecosystem -- among service providers, enablement platforms, and companies providing apps, content, and services. Competition is particularly intense -- and evolution especially fast-paced -- among device manufacturers and operating system companies. Apple's iOS, Google's Android OS, and Microsoft's Windows Phone OS are fighting for market share while keeping an eye on newer entrants, such as Amazon's Fire OS, Nokia's X platform, Xiaomi MIUI, Firefox OS, and Tizen, which are further augmenting user choice and competition. All of this leads to faster innovation, more capable devices, and lower prices.
BCG also added that a big part of the mobile Internet success story is the flourishing app economy. There have been more than 200 billion cumulative downloads from the various app stores since the first app was developed in 2008. More than 100 billion downloads took place in 2013 alone, of which around 20 billion were in the EU. Leading app-store operators paid developers more than $15 billion between June 2013 and July 2014. The report notes that some of the world's largest and most successful developers of mobile gaming apps are in Europe.
Image by Patrice Semeria, via Wikimedia Commons
