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The Mobile Economy Outlook is Valued at $3.1 Trillion

There's an evolving co-dependent ecosystem of vendors offering many new interrelated products and services that are helping to fuel growth in the mobile sector of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) industries.

According to the latest market study by Yankee Group, the mobile economy is now blooming at an even faster rate than expected -- by 2017 the collective market will be valued at $3.1 trillion, that's $200 billion more than the $2.9 trillion they forecast in October 2012.

This spike in potential earnings can be credited to all four mobile categories -- devices, commerce, broadband, software apps and related cloud services -- all seeing increased market interest.

In their latest study, Yankee Group took a closer look at some of the key metrics and data trends behind the largest, most significant pockets of mobile industry growth.

The mobile devices and mobile commerce sectors are growing quicker than previously forecast, with expectations for mobile devices now reaching $919 billion and mobile commerce reaching $906 billion by 2017.

Although mobile broadband's market growth rate has begun to slow, it continues to represent the largest sector of the new mobile economy in raw terms and is expected to reach $1.121 trillion by 2017.

Mobile applications and cloud will continue to see significant growth as well -- albeit at a slightly lower level than previously forecast, now predicted to reach $145 billion by 2017.

"If we had to sum up the trends driving mobility in 2013 and beyond, we'd say we've entered the land of very big numbers (such as mobile line and smartphone penetration), and are nearing the threshold of very fast levels of network speeds and very high levels of acceptance of a wide range of mobile-first behaviors," said Rich Karpinski, Senior Analyst at Yankee Group.

Yankee believes that Big is good, of course, but it also brings with it some significant challenges.

As the mobile economy grows, early exponential growth turns to slow steady progress, separating out the flashes-in-the-pan from the true mobile stalwarts.

As we move from the early days of mobility into maturity, companies in each of the core sectors of the new mobile economy -- networks, devices, commerce and apps -- all face significant challenges.

Much of the ongoing activity and progress revolves around the business models and associated mobile OS-related platforms of the two leading players -- Apple and Google. That focus doesn't appear to be changing, in the foreseeable future.

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