The UK leads the market for music phones, according to M:Metrics. The research firm has released figures on the mobile music market for the first time, showing that the UK has the highest penetration of musicphones (defined as phones that are capable of music storage and playback) – 40% of the total. Germany follows with 34%, then Italy (32%), Spain (29%)  and France (23%).

The US lags with only 17% of mobile subscribers owning a musicphone, but is showing “impressive growth”.

Sideloading – transferring music from a computer to a mobile device – is the universally preferred source of music on mobile phones by a wide margin, says M:Metrics.

“There has been consumer experimentation with over-the-air, full-track downloads, but downloading music from carrier music stores has yet to make a significant impact,” observed M:Metrics’ analyst. “The two main barriers to greater adoption of over-the-air music services – accessibility and fair value – are lesser issues with sideloaded music. The prevalence of sideloading, largely shaped by current usage and understanding of digital music players, shows that the perceived value in musicphones is still in the ability to make one’s personal music collection portable, as opposed to a new acquisition point for music.”

Mobile music consumption comparison: January 2007

Listened to sideloaded music
UK:    12.2%
IT:    10%
DE:    8.4%
ES:    8.8%
FR:    4.4%
USA:     2.9%

Downloaded new songs from carrier music store
UK:    2.7%
IT:    1.3%
DE:    0.5%
ES:    2.4%
FR:    0.5%
USA:    0.7%