It's hard not to sympathize with the soothsayers over at PricewaterhouseCoopers. In putting together its 11th annual edition of "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2010-2014," released last week, the firm not only had to cope with a rate of change "even quicker than anticipated" but had to base five-year forecasts on experiments barely under way.

Last year's "Outlook," for example, envisioned a 3.9% decline in the sell-through value of filmed-entertainment DVDs for 2009 and a 0.3% dip in 2010. But consumers are proving such early adopters -- witness unexpected strength in digital downloads and video-on-demand -- that DVDs actually fell 5.9% in 2009 and are expected to slip a further 1.5% in 2010.

As for experimentation, consider the business model import of Twitter Inc.'s announcement in April of plans to run old-fashioned advertising under the new-media rubric of Promoted Tweets. This raises but doesn't answer what PwC recognizes as a question central to all social media: "whether they can generate ad revenues without alienating their user base." In newspapers, similarly, what is the advisory to make of News Corp.'s decision in March to start charging for online stories from The Times and The Sunday Times of London? Dare it predict success for this experiment with the flagship U.K. properties, especially after conceding it's "virtually impossible for newspapers and magazines to charge consumers for general online content"?

Despite such obstacles to twenty-twenty foresight, PwC's annual projections serve as a useful reset of M&E expectations and a constructive reminder of global diversity. Japan dominates mobile Internet, presently accounting for more than half of global spending to gain access to the category. But that merely suggests a lot of catch-up from markets whose Japan-like mobile Internet explosions are still in front of them.

In China, where microtransactions account for virtually all online purchases, the payment mechanism is expected to transfer $18 billion annually by 2014. Elsewhere, though, PwC reports "that many consumers are happier paying a subscription or a small number of larger bills than making an ongoing series of very small payment decisions."

Not even recorded music, which continued its downturn with a 3.2% sales decline last year, lends itself to easy generalization. Asia-Pacific not only went against the global trend but defied its own recent history by turning a sales decline of 3.4% in 2008 into a 9% gain in 2009 -- a "stunning reversal" that PwC attributes to a surge in authorized digital music spending in South Korea and Japan.

With regional differences, however, come consumer similarities. And PwC uncovers a whopper on discerning a shift in consumer loyalty from content providers to device makers: "Consumers today relate to iPods, not generic portable music players; to iPhones or BlackBerrys, not generic smart phones; and to Kindles and iPads, not generic electronic readers."

Bear in mind these generic gadgets of yore were secondary to the content for which they were purchased. A CD player was defined not by its branding but by the CDs consumers put on it; likewise, a VCR brand mattered less than the videocassettes it could play.

"In contrast," PwC notes, "many of the current generations of devices -- and, notably, the iPod and iPhone -- are proprietary systems." They're closed, in other words, and they're currently in competition with such open systems like the mobile-phone platform that Google Inc. developed for Motorola Inc.'s Droid.

History has long preferred open systems, which allow consumers to share content across devices. But the odds may no longer be in their favor, given consumers' increasing loyalty to device makers. "From the viewpoints of many consumers today," PwC explains, "what matters more than an open or closed system is the availability of third-party apps and super-fast mobile broadband on a device they find easy to use." Indeed, to the degree its offerings are exclusive, Apple Inc.'s platoon of independent application developers is likely accelerating the shift in loyalty from content providers to device makers.

PwC is careful, nonetheless, to acknowledge the years of turbulence already afflicting M&E. "But the most lasting legacy of the downturn," it proclaims, "may well prove to be its role in accelerating the pace of digital transformation, bringing with it new -- and more profound -- challenges." And while that may sound like more of the same, a deep dive into the report's 650 pages corroborates where PwC insists M&E is today: "at a defining moment of reevaluation and redefinition of its business models in ways that will ultimately redraw the value chain."

For more, see the archives of his Backstory columns

Richard Morgan covers media for The Deal.