European Carrier Billing provider DIMOCO, in partnership with leading partners Juniper Research and Price Waterhouse Coopers, revealed Carrier Billing as the top payment method for billing digital content in Germany. According to their joint research, consumers are more likely to purchase digital content if Carrier Billing is offered due to its simplicity, convenience and security and that fact that the service is available on multiple screens, leading to higher conversion rates on digital content promotions.
The digital content market in Germany is forecast to reach 4,623 m EUR in 2018 and is divided into the following segments - e-publishing, e-games, home video and digital music. The e-publishing which comprises the e-book, e-magazine and e-newspaper sub-segments is expected to rake in revenues of 1,684 million EUR in 2018 and e-games, an expected revenue of EUR 1,569 million while home videos and digital music are expected to generate revenues of 761 million euros and 609 million euros respectively.
The availability of carrier billing services allows providers of services, transitional goods and digital content across various digital channels to monetize their offerings via either one-off or subscription service transactions, with transactions in the country ranging in terms of price from 0.19 and 30 EUR.
According to DIMOCO, conversion rates up to 70% for first time transactions and up to 80-88% for repeated digital content purchases were measured in Europe. Although mobile handset penetration reaches 139.2 percent in Germany and smartphone penetration is already 50.1 percent, with many people having two mobile devices, only 35 percent of the population owns a credit card, which makes carrier billing an effective solution to get more people purchasing content from the Internet.
“Digital content is being increasingly consumed on mobile devices, as the number of smartphones in Germany has gone up by 20% in just the last 2 years”, says Gerald Tauchner, DIMOCO Co-Founder and CEO, comparing figures from DIMOCOs’ Germany Carrier Billing market specials 2014 and 2015.
