Remember that concept for downloading mobile music that we kept hearing about? Ya, you remember. Well, it seems these puppies are really start to move out the door; or onto the phone, rather.

A new research report says that full-track mobile downloads increased 20 times in 2005 (via Abiro) over the previous year, with global revenues leaping from $12.4 million to $251 million. Let’s focus on that, rather than the ridiculous prediction that the number will be $9.3 billion in 2011 (since there’s no telling how they got it).

First, let’s discount Japan. KDDI’s Chaku-Uta Full service has been growing like crazy for a couple years now. Last year, it did about 29 million downloads, finishing with a rate of about 10 million tracks per month. Songs cost about 300 yen (about $2.50), so it accounted for about a quarter of the world’s total. And it sold less than 1 million tracks in 2004, so its growth outpaced the world as a whole as well. Source: MobHappy

[tags]downloads,full-track downloads,chaku-uta full service,global revenues[/tags]