Indian music download users to touch 213 mn by '13

While the number of music download users in the Asia Pacific will reach 878.9 million by the end of 2013, India is the country that will record the highest growth in the number of users, according to new market research report by IE Market Research Corporation. IE Market Research Corporation (IEMR), the Canadian-based provider of market intelligence services, announced today the release of its Asia Pacific Digital Music Forecast for online, mobile, and subscription channels, 2009 - 2013.

"Although the recent worldwide recession will slow growth in paid digital music users in the short term, we expect that volumes will pick up noticeably in the end of 2010 - 2011 as the economy recovers. IEMR estimates that the number of paid users in the Asia Pacific region will increase from 320.7 million in 2008 to 878.9 million in 2013, for a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.7 per cent," said Nizar Assanie, Vice President (Research) at IEMR. "The largest market in the Asia-Pacific region is China. We forecast that the number of digital music paid download users in China will increase from 106.4 million in 2008 to 296.6 million in 2013, for a CAGR of 19.4 per cent. However, the market that enjoys the highest growth will be India where we expect that the number of paid users will increase from 56.6 million in 2008 to 213.4 million in 2013, for a CAGR of 50.0 per cent. The majority of these users will be downloading digital music to their mobile phones rather than to their computers."

"In contrast to China and India, the majority of digital music download users in Australia and New Zealand will be online users, not mobile users. This result is consistent with high levels of broadband penetration in Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, 6.26 million out of 8.66 million digital music paid download users will be online users in 2013 (72.3 per cent). This is in vivid contrast with China where, in 2013, only 18.9 million users out of 296.6 million digital music paid users (6.4 per cent) will online users. Somewhere in-between these two countries will be Japan where 43.4 million users out of 101.8 million total users (42.6 per cent) will be online users in 2013," says Assanie.

In terms of revenues, we expect that digital music download retail revenues will increase from $1.91 billion in 2008 to $6.43 billion in 2013, for a CAGR of 62.6 per cent. In the Asia Pacific region, most of the retail revenues come from mobile broadband music download. Digital music retail revenues from the mobile channel will increase from $1.53 billion in 2008 to $4.48 billion in 2013, for a CAGR of 35.3 per cent. On the other hand, retails revenues from online download (over the fixed network) will increase from $0.25 billion to $1.28 billion over the forecast period, 2008 - 2013.

The countries/areas covered in this forecast are Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and the rest of Asia Pacific (which includes American Samoa, Brunei, Cambodia, Fiji, Guam, North Korea, Laos, Marshall Islands, Myanmar, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Northern Marianas Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Polynesia (French), Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu).