ASM
Asia Drives Mobile Phone Growth
Revenues flowing to operators of mobile telephone networks will break $1 trillion in 2011, according to a report from IT research consultancy Ovum. The rise will be largely driven by growth in the Asia Pacific region, which is expected to account for $290 billion.
This represents a compound annual growth rate of about 8 per cent. Such growth will create problems for some network operators, says the report. On the other hand, developers of mobile phone applications stand to gain considerably.
China and India will dominate the growth in connections. They will account for 30 per cent of all connections by 2014, when their penetration rates will reach 76 per cent and 69 per cent respectively. They will not reach 100 per cent until 2020.
To drive this growth, the amount of money made per consumer and the amount of money made per voicecall-minute will decline sharply. Operators can expect revenue to rise at only half the rate the number of connections will increase.
In developed markets, mobile penetration already exceeds 100 per cent. Growth can only be sustained by converting large numbers of uses to data-centric devices. As such, in these regions population penetration is ceasing to be a useful indicator.
Although voice traffic will continue to dominate in countries like Singapore and Australia, the growth will be in data-centric applications such as location awareness. Expectations are that voice will account for 69 per cent of revenues globally (66 per cent in Asia-Pacific) in 2011, but continue to decline.
The report also says the key to future prosperity for operators is the development of more efficient networks and more compelling data-centric applications.
