As mobile technology becomes more advanced, users are becoming less reliant on carriers for accessing content, according to a new report. The survey, Mobile Content Survey Results by ABI Research showed how mobile users are turning to a variety of sources, such as the web and their own personal collection to upload content onto their mobile phones.

Of the 14 per cent of mobile users who view video on their mobile phones, 35 per cent obtain the content from sites such as YouTube, 31 per cent download via carriers and 28 per cent watch video which they have sideloaded themselves. When it comes to music, nearly half (48 per cent) get their music by sideloading their own collection. What is surprising, however, is that despite the cost of downloading music from carriers, two-thirds of users continue to do so.

It would appear that carriers have a stronger degree of control when it comes to mobile games. 60 per cent of respondents who play games on their phone, play only the default games preloaded onto the handset.

Michael Wolf, research director at ABI Research, argues that the overall results shows carriers’ control over mobile content is waning.

"We expect to see increased content acquisition directly to the phone from the Web. And despite a loosening of control over content delivery to consumers, we believe the carriers will ultimately benefit as they open up their networks and handset platforms and look into taking advantage of increased advertising-supported content delivery," Wolf concluded.

Jonathan Watson, CEO of mobile marketing company, Reactor Mobile, agrees that the mobile market is growing too quick for carriers to be the main providers of content.

"In the long term the carriers are unlikely to dominate in terms of content provision, we can look to the Internet for an example. That would have been like the ISP’s dominating content provision on the Internet, something which clearly hasn’t happened. Already we are seeing greater movement by the carriers to shift away from the walled garden approach and open up to off-portal content.

"Carriers such as Vodafone in the UK are among many others who are pushing content discovery via partnerships with companies like Google to enable better mobile search from the operator portal. This is coupled with the growth of mobile advertising on-portal and the current trend of development of carrier independent ad-networks that are syndicated across popular off-portal sites.

"While carriers won’t ever become a dumb pipe as they’re going to offer their own services, clearly different the business models for on and off-portal content distribution are going to evolve as the market opens up," said Watson.

Another interesting development in the mobile content space will be the rise in content from broadcasting companies. Mobile media group, U-Turn believes that traditional media companies will provide a large proportion of content which will directly affect the role of service providers.

"Media companies are likely to be the biggest mobile content providers in the future. Mobile phone is a new channel for these companies to reach audience for the already existing content. However, broadcasting companies such as TV and radio stations are not interested in providing their content through one carrier branded mobile portal. They want to be able to access viewers independently of the carriers and regardless of the type of mobile device," said Toby Downes, Head of Marketing for mobile video company, U-Turn.

Mobile services company, IMImobile sees user generated content as another potential profitable revenue for carriers. However, carriers will have to learn how to manage this phenomenon if they are looking to profit from it.

"On the face of it, user generated content sounds like nirvana for mobile operators. In essence, their subscribers create entertaining licence-free video clips, pictures, songs, jokes and the like, at no cost to the operator which then charges the originator to upload to its portal. The operator then typically rewards the content provider only when other subscribers download that content and takes a cut from the fee it charges the downloader - in affect charging both ways without any of the hassles that arise when dealing with licensed content. Not only this, but experience of the web over the last few years with sites such as Facebook and YouTube shows us that not only can content sharing sites generate enormous volumes of traffic but they also create loyal communities and grow virally once established," said Vishwanath Alluri, CEO IMImobile.

Customer experience systems provider, Amdocs, whose own research in mobile content will be released in mid-April, believes service providers can still play an important role in the distribution of content. Their main role will be to help users locate relevant content.

"Service providers need to improve the relevancy of content to customers, make it easy to find on and off-portal, and demonstrate the value of content to increase sales.  Currently, the most common scenario is that customers go to their operator’s portal where they find mainstream content that is irrelevant to them.  With the appropriate recommendation engine and personalisation features, those users would be more likely to purchase if the content they see is tailored to suit," said Eitan Gelbaum, VP of Product Marketing, at Amdocs.