Guardian writer Victor Keegan has written today about why mobile content providers have been able to generate greater revenues than their brethren on the web:

Revenues from the web are about $25bn (£12.5bn) but the content on mobile networks is reckoned by Informa to be worth $31bn - and that is before music and mobile TV take off in a big way.

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Tomi Ahonen, a strategy consultant, points out that whereas porn and gambling drove revenues on the internet, five content groups are more successful than adult material on mobile phones: music, infotainment, images, videogames and web browsing. He reminds us that in 2005 one annoying ringtone, Crazy Frog, outsold all of iTunes. A key reason is that most content on the web is free whereas mobile phones arrived with a payment system pre-installed for calls, followed by a premium service for texting. If the web had had its own payment system it would have taken a different course.

Head over to the Guardian to read the rest of this fascinating take on the present state of mobile commerce. (via Textually)