Snowballing multimedia trends are being harnessed by different companies in different ways to grow new revenue streams and better serve audiences, speakers told the third session of the World Newspaper Congress today.

Bharat Gupta, chairman, managing director and managing editor of Jagran Prakashan in India told the congress about "the making of the world's highest read newspaper." Sandy Prieto-Romualdez, president and CEO of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, told about her newspaper's mobile-centric publishing strategy that capitaizes on the fact that Filipinos are among the most prolific phone texters in the world.

The newspaper has 55 million daily readers. Gupta described a print strategy that focused on building relationships with readers, with respecting the competition, with starting afresh with each new edition and not assuming what works in one place will work in another. Every market is unique and calls for a different approach.

"Dainik Jagran's content is changed to reflect the colloquial tastes of every local market," he said.

Mobile advertising represents only 1 percent of company revenues, but Prieto-Romualdez predicted this will change as soon as next year, thanks to two new technologies that are now being introduced.

One allows readers to use their mobile phone cameras to take a picture of an icon in the print newspaper and have instant access to video associated with the story. "It allows the paper to be more interactive and gives the reader wider engagement in the news," she said.

As of the end of 2007, China was the leading mobile market in the world, with more than 500 million subscribers. This figure was up from about 300 million in 2004, with a net addition of more than 50 million each year, according to IDATE.

The United States was the second largest mobile market, with more than 250 million subscribers at the end of 2007. The market was relatively mature as it reached nearly 200 million in 2004, and grew less than 25 million annually, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

India followed close behind, with more than 200 million. In 2004, there were only about 50 million subscribers. The numbers increased rapidly, with more than 50 million in 2006 and 2007.

Russia and Brazil were ranked in the fourth and fifth spots at the end of 2007, both marking significant increases from 2004, according to IDATE.

Japan, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom were also on the list, but were relatively saturated markets, with fewer additional increases each year compared with the developing markets.

Two percent, or two hours per month, of all TV viewing in the United States happens outside traditional TV devices, Media Post reported.

According to a recent survey conducted by Horowitz Associates, 2 percent represents two hours out of the overall 130.2 hours American TV viewers watch in a month.

Of those who had a PC or laptop, 9 percent, or 13 hours out of 138.6 monthly TV-content consuming hours, is spent on a platform other than a TV set. Among those multichannel viewers who watch TV content on a handheld device, 8 percent, or 12 hours out of the 143.1 monthly hours, is viewed on a platform other than a TV set.

The most popular Web destinations to view videos included YouTube.com, ABC.com. Hulu.com and NBC.com. Those types of programs people watched most on alternative video platforms are scripted dramas (24 percent); news programming (14 percent); comedy shows (13 percent); sports (13 percent); and sitcoms (11 percent).

Thirty-six percent of respondents said they wish all their favorite shows were available online, while another 30 percent wish all TV programmes were available on handheld devices, according to Horowitz.

The telecom market worldwide was worth US$1.18 trillion in 2006, and surged to $1.25 trillion in 2007, with more than half coming from mobile services, and more than 30 percent from developing countries, according to IDATE.

Numbers of fixed lines totalled 1.25 billion in 2006 and climbed to 1.26 billion in 2007, reaching 20 percent of the global population, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

The number of mobile subscribers grew from 2.67 billion worldwide in 2006 to 3.18 billion in 2007, with penetration of more than 50 percent of the total population.

Broadband subscribers, meanwhile, grew from 279 million to 348 million. However, the penetration was still low, at 5.5 percent in 2007, according to IDATE.

Numbers of fixed lines globally totalled 1.13 billion in 2003, with an approximate 50-50 split from industrialised and developing countries.

The numbers were up to 1.26 billion in 2007, in which growth was seen in developing countries, but the numbers declined in industrialised nations, according to the report, World Digital Media Trends 2009, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.