The value of mobile music services is set to double in the five years to 2010, by which time they will exceed $11 billion, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. Although the majority of revenue will still come from ringtones, the forecast growth in the ring-back tone and full track download sectors confirms the concept of the mobile phone as a credible music device. A large sector of both the mobile and the music industries have galvanised around mobile music and for the last year have been helping to progress this sector. Handset manufacturers are devoting significant energy into creating sophisticated music devices and operators have been busy rolling out advanced music download services. According to Simon Dyson, co-author of the report, �the growth of mobile music has been astounding, from a cottage industry making basic monophonic ringtones in 1998 to a multi-billion dollar global business on which the music industry is staking much of its future.� All of this activity might suggest that mobile music is in something of a bubble at present and indeed there remains a large number of issues which need to be resolved at all points in the value chain before mobile music can truly move beyond its current ringtone staple.
Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul