Mobile content management will account for $8 billion in global revenue this year, analysts at Insight Research said in a new report, Content Management for Wireless Networks, 2008-2013.

The report covers 42 companies but does not include rankings or forecasts.  Insight president Robert Rosenberg said its purpose is to show that  content management systems for mobile devices are primitive compared to their desktop counterparts.

Mobility should be a standard part of all mainstream content management systems, allowing programmers and content creators to worry about data instead of formatting.  “What we’re saying is, give it 2 or 3 years and there’s going to be some neat ones out there.  We’re trying to look ahead instead of where the ducks are flying right now.  It’s simply a question of the entrepreneurial environment sitting back and recognizing the opportunity that exists in content management systems,” he said.

“We’re really in the first throes  of mobile content management… the whole reason mobile content management today is to get the content on the handset,” compared to far more sophisticated systems for desktop content management, he added.  “Right now everybody bows down to mobile because mobile in the telecommunications industry is where all the growth is happening, all across the globe.  But as we move to a global IP infrastructure the location of the endpoint is kind of secondary.” 

For mobiles, the content management technology that really stands out is the AXMEDIS framework, he said.  The name is a loose acronym for “Automating Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-channel Distribution”; the system evolved in 2004 and is endorsed by the European Commission.

Insight’s staff studied mobile content management for 6 months, but nobody really knows how much time and money is wasted by developers and content creators as they focus on output types instead of their data and their message, Rosenberg said.