Telecom markets in Latin America have been growing consistently during the last couple of years with some markets more than doubling in the last year. This growth is going to continue to rise in the near future. Mobile content business is also growing as applications become more and more popular.

In this scenario, the business of creating mobile content in Spanish is the newest emerging opportunity. Mobile content has already taken with great success in North America, Europe and Asia. Latin America is an untapped market in relation to mobile content.

Latin markets are ripe as competition is still relatively uneducated, yet content business is already worth well over US$ 100 million this year and growing at a rate of over 200% per year. There is no doubt that this is the time to enter the business in order to be among the few that will gain a place in this particular stage. Mobile applications are multiplying and each Latin market has its own preferences and participants. These are vital indicators to be carefully considered at the time of designing penetration strategies for the different markets.

This market comprises not only Latin America and Spain but also the fast growing Spanish speaking population in the US. Leading developers have perceived this exploding circumstance and their Spanish mobile content business in Latin America has already reached the hundred million dollars mark.

Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia account for approximately 124 million mobile subscribers and 71 per cent of the Latin American market. The right time to enter the content markets is now, when the level of competition is still low.

This South American giant, is the 11^th biggest economy in the world and has already become the 7^th biggest telecom market with a population of 183 million and a mobile penetration of 36,4 per cent. As a result, its mobile content market is also experiencing a meteoric growth - the country will have 94 million mobile subscribers by 2009 - therefore creating multiple business opportunities, especially in mobile content. Brazil has become the operational base for many telecom companies, especially for those that have operations in South America. Some of its states offer tax advantages for informatics and mobile suppliers reinvesting in R&D. Operators are involved in tough competition using services as key differentiators and launching innovative concepts and hot content services. There are plenty of aggregators that will help new companies to get billing and delivery rapidly running

Market Insight: Content market is growing rapidly in Brazil specifically in the areas if JAVA/BREW games, polyphonic ringing tones, chat services, video and music video clip services, TV crossmedia services, graphics content, security applications, subscription based services and many others. Music content should be especially considered, as it will rapidly become a very large market by itself. The main business model is revenue sharing, with some 50% up for developers. Operator TIM’s nationwide network in itself represents 20% of the whole Latin American content market.

The second largest economy in Latin America, with a growing population of 105 million, is also going through a similar fast growing stage in mobile telecom content. This country has a very large young population, who are the main consumers of this product: over 25 million people between ages 12 and 24. With a mobile penetration of 32,5 per cent, it will reach 46 million mobile subscribers by 2009.

There is a need for value added services in Mexico and mobile content companies can work together with operators, helping them to foster client loyalty and finding alternative revenue streams.

Market Insight: An effective penetration strategy would be to enter America Movil (Telcel), which currently has 27 million subscribers with innovative services and applications. As the company holds a stronghold in the US, it can serve as a bridge to jump into the growing US Hispanic content market. Deploy Telcel properties in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, independently or associated with some other company.

As Mexicans watch TV more than people of any other country, cross-media should be carefully considered. Other hot sector areas are games, security applications and video and music services for high-end markets, among others.