India, Fastest Growing Mobile Phone Market

[Arun 795]

Rediff.com

October 31, 2007 07:24 IST

Contrary to popular perception, India, and not China, will add the most new subscribers to the international mobile telephony market, a just released research study says.

The report, 'The next billion: How emerging markets are shaping the mobile industry,' released by the Boston-based Pyramid Research, says that the global mobile market will go through unprecedented changes over the next few years, adding one billion new subscribers to the current 2.8 billion base over the next three years.

But these next billion subscribers will come from very different markets -- the emerging economies. 'Fully 87 per cent of the next billion mobile subscribers will come from emerging economies. And India, not China, will add the most new subscribers,' it said.

While India and China are the largest markets in terms of growth, they represent only 35 per cent of the next billion mobile users.

At the end of 2006, there were nearly 2.8 billion mobile subscriptions around the world, translating to a penetration rate of 44 per cent. The share of the population with mobile subscriptions is far higher in the richer economies of the world than in the emerging markets -- regions such as Western Europe exceed 100 per cent, whereas in most of Africa and South-East Asia, penetration rates average less than 20 per cent.

'It is thus evident that the bulk of future mobile growth will come from emerging economies,' the study says.

Of the 30 fastest-growing markets, 10 are in Africa and the Middle East, and eight are in emerging Asia. Of the next billion subscribers, 71% will come from parts of the world with urbanization levels below 50 per cent, it says.

'Clearly, any vendor, carrier or investor with global ambitions needs to understand the differences among these markets,' it says.

According to the report, by 2010, 74 per cent of mobile subscribers will live in emerging economies, and while they will only contribute 40 per cent of global revenue due to lower average revenue per user, they are among the most profitable given the lower cost of serving them.

There are tremendous differences among and within these emerging markets in terms of end-user preferences. The mobile networks will be the access points to broadband services in many of these markets, the report says.