Asia Mobile Market Growing at 24%: Frost

Written by Adam Gosling

Tuesday, 03 April 2007

Page 1 of 2 Driven by the uptake of mobile telephony by the growing middle classes in China and India, the Asia Pacific mobile phone business is growing at a significant rate. That's likely to continue for some time unabated with India's penetration rate reaching only 13 per cent according to Frost & Sullivan. The Asia Pacific Mobile Communications Outlook 2007, a new analysis from Frost & Sullivan looks at 13 major Asia-Pacific economies and finds that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2002 and 2006 was of 24 per cent. The market now numbers nearly a billion subscribers (0.95 billion in 2006) and the overall penetration rate in the Pacific still has a little room to grow standing at 30.9 per cent last year. Frost expects the Asia-Pacific mobile subscriber base can reach an estimated 1.14 billion by the end of this year, driven by the robust growth in emerging markets. This means the Asia-Pacific region remains one of the few high-growth mobile markets in the world. Apart from the vast subscriber base, much of this growth is driven by drastically reduced calling rates, decline in handset prices and the expansion of network infrastructure in the emerging markets of India and Indonesia. As at June 2006, India has overtaken Japan as the second largest mobile services market in Asia-Pacific in terms of subscribers, after China. In fact, with 142.7 million subscribers in 2006 and a mobile penetration rate of only 13 per cent, the market in India still remains largely untapped. "The impact of the emerging markets on the rest of the region is likely to grow in significance as regional carriers search for sustainable growth, and as economies of scale further drives down 3G handset prices," notes Frost & Sullivan industry manager Janice Chong." "Of the expected 190 million net subscriber additions in 2007, 90.8 per cent is likely to stem from the emerging markets" Ms Chong adds. << Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>