14 DAY TRIAL // The mobile service revenues all around the world are expected to reach US$1 trillion in 2013, even if the voice revenues were said to decrease in the meantime, a recent report from Informa Telecom's & Media shows. Moreover, the report states that the growth in service revenues will be mainly fueled by data revenues, which should top more than US$330 billion in 2013, up from US$208 billion in 2008.
“The backdrop to this transition in the industry is the fact that the internet has started to dominate the landscape for new services and applications, and telecoms operators are under increasing pressure to remain valuable and relevant in the eyes of their end-users,” says Mark Newman, chief research officer at Informa Telecoms & Media. “As this happens, the growth in data revenues is being spurred by the rise in take-up of more advanced technologies and mobile broadband services, as well as new handset interfaces and mobile content strategies based on application stores rather than walled gardens.”
Data services are expected to prove as being the basis of revenues growth for wireless operators, says Informa, adding that the revenues and data ARPU(average revenue per user) in Japan should surpass voice revenues and ARPU in 2014. The deployment of LTE networks is expected to help the growth of data revenues, both in Japan and other markets, the firm states. In Japan, data revenues are forecast to top US$39.7 billion in 2014, and monthly data ARPU is projected to be US$24.56.
Other findings of the report also include the following: “Second-generation mobile technologies still account for 90% of the world's subscriptions, but by the end of 2012, this figure will fall to 70%, and by the end of 2014, over half the world's 6.7 billion mobile subscriptions will be to 3G and 3.5G+ technologies. Furthermore, Informa projects that by the end of 2014, 3.5G+ technologies will represent over a third of the total number of subscriptions.”
According to the report, the quality and coverage of a wireless carrier's network will also be important factors in the adoption of data services. The importance of the network has been already enhanced by the fast increase in mobile broadband, mainly due to the fact that operators advert their services based on the speed and coverage of their airwaves. By 2014, the global subscription penetration should reach 92 percent, which will show that meaningful new growth will only be available in rural parts of Africa and Asia Pacific, and that data services will be of a greater importance.