Mobile phones to reach 2b subscribers this year
Abu Saeed Khan
The worldwide mobile phone market will cross two billion subscribers this year and be approaching three billion by the end of 2010, according to the latest edition of the Global Mobile Forecasts to 2010 report, yesterday published by London-based research company Informa Telecoms and Media.The report says that overall market growth was boosted in 2004, with 91 million more new customers during the year than there were in 2003. Although the annual growth rate is feared to fall into single digit within a couple of years, over one billion new customers are due to be added between now and the end of 2010. Almost half of these new customers will be in the Asia Pacific region. Two huge Asian markets - India and China - will account for over 30 percent (371.6 million) of the region's total. The Middle East and African markets will also show the greatest growth. Their combined markets will be more than double in size, with over 200 million new customers signing up for mobile services by 2010. As a result of the continued growth, several countries are already reporting penetration rates of over 100 percent and Western Europe's regional penetration is set to breach 100 percent in a couple of years. By 2010, the global penetration is expected to be 43 percent. It's not all good news, though average revenue per user (ARPU) is still falling. "While the industry has tended to underestimate subscriber levels, it has been over-optimistic on ARPU levels," says Mark Newman, Informa Telecoms and Media's Chief Research Officer. Operators were hoping that the introduction of 2.5G and 3G would start pushing ARPU upwards but this is not proving to be the case. The 3G or third generation mobile operators are pricing voice services at low levels to attract new customers and this is putting downward pressure on the overall ARPU. Voice revenue per user will continue to decline as conventional voice applications become more commoditised. The increasing use of enhanced services over 2.5G and 3G networks will lead to an increase in data ARPU and revenues from data services are forecast to increase by 83 percent between 2005 and 2010. However, this increase will not be enough to counteract the effect of falling voice revenues as the growth in the overall market declines and negative growth is forecast for total revenues in 2009 and 2010.
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