User-Generated Content (UGC), such as that found on YouTube and MySpace, will continue to grow significantly in popularity and generate increasing revenue over the next several years, a market research report says. By 2010, the volume of downloads/views on these sites will surpass 65 billion, and revenues tied to UGC video are expected to exceed $850 million by 2010, according to the report by In-Stat.
"Democratisation of media affords users the opportunity to express their opinions, rate content, and vote for their favorite videos," In-Stat says. "In addition, what may currently seem like ‘the Wild West’ is actually an industry that has started to see idiosyncratic ‘judiciary bodies’ and ‘rules of law’ imposed by each player within this market."
The new research found that the size of downloads/views are estimated to eclipse 1.1 exabytes of data by 2010, with uploads growing to more than 9.1 petabytes. It says that 23 per cent of the dozens of UCG sites studied currently support mobile access, with others making announcements for this support in the near future.
Network security
Meanwhile, on a different plane, the Asia-Pacific network security market registered a decline in revenues of 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2006 compared to the final quarter of 2005. Spending decreased across all security technologies, except for SSL VPN (secure sockets layer virtual private network), says new analysis from Frost & Sullivan, a consulting firm. F&S says that the market — covering 14 major Asia-Pac economies, including India — earned revenues of $290.8 million in Q1 2006. "Despite the lacklustre performance, the market expanded by 13.7 per cent compared to the same quarter last year," the firm says.
Most enterprises and governments were involved with budget evaluation and planning at the beginning of the fiscal year. Therefore, spending on network security is typically slower than other quarters. "Enterprises in mature markets such as South Korea and Taiwan are also slowing down spending on intrusion detection or prevention solutions," it says. This can be attributed to the perceived low returns on heavy investments in intrusio detection and prevention (IDP) solutions in the last two years. "Nevertheless, healthy growth in expenditure can be expected in the subsequent quarters," forecasts Tan. "Deployments of integrated security appliances are already giving impetus to the network security market." Competition is further intensifying in the Asia-Pacific region. Major vendors are placing increasing emphasis on marketing and lead generation.