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: by consumers across all age groups.

In 2006-07, about 6,00,000 to 8,00,000 ringtones were downloaded daily in India contributing to a revenue of about Rs 180 crore in that fiscal year. The size of this market is growing by more than 50% annually and is expected to cross Rs 270 crore by March 2008. The mobile music industry is estimated to reach nearly Rs 600 crore this year and is growing at more than 25% annually.

Manoj Dawane, chief executive officer, People Infocom (MAUJ) feels, “Mobile visibility allows a film to create a recall factor and build on the popularity quotient. It is a means of touching audiences on-the-go. Considering that the mobile phones today have phenomenal penetration rates, it becomes a perfect channel to reach across the length and breadth of geographies.”

Meanwhile, as far as the Internet is concerned, India has the fourth largest market in the world. There is a rapid growth in the global Internet traffic and downloads contribute a great deal to the stickiness of netizens. A three-million broadband connection base in the country available at a speed of 256 kbps sometimes restricts the kind of downloads that are made—97% of Internet downloads are either free or illegal. A major chunk of the revenues are lost due to piracy.

Siddharth Roy Kapoor, executive vice-president, marketing distribution and syndication, UTV Motion Pictures feels, “With new innovations in technology, film content can be consumed through Internet, mobile, IPTV and DTH downloads that act as another revenue stream. Downloaded film and television content have a huge demand overseas, however, the size of legitimate download is really negligible because of rampant piracy.”

Production houses benefit a great deal from the business of downloads as they are crucial in tapping the overseas market where the demand for Indian film and television content is huge. Films like Dhoom 2, Don, Salaam-e-Ishq, Heyy Baby, Dus Kahaniyaan, Spiderman 3, Bewoulf and the Rajnikanth starrer Sivaji benefited from downloaded revenues. Character and theme-based games built around the concept of these films were hugely popular among audiences.