Asian Market Pushing Cell Phones

According to analysis by Frost & Sullivan approximately 573 million cell phone users are expected to join the mobile market emerging in Asia by the last quarter of 2012.

Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam are expected to produce more cell phone subscribes, which will bring the market into big billion dollar territory. To be exact, Asia will close out 2012 with about 1.06 billion cell phone users.

Just last year, there were already 487 million wireless users, which made up 37.1 percent of the cell phone subscribers in the Asia Pacific region.

Also last year, Asia’s mobile market earned $33.27 billion, through eight countries. Analysts and experts say that the industry is growing 10.7 percent per year. That means that by the end of 2013, the industry could reach $61.35 billion.

Then again, an analyst for Frost & Sullivan, who gathered all this information, tells PC World that “more than half of the world’s mobile networks are believed to exist in emerging markets.” This means that the markets in Asia, North and South America, and Europe are quickly reaching saturation. Soon, there may be no more people left to buy cell phones.

To that end, Asia is taking the market to rural territories. In fact, they plan to add an addition one billion cell phone users to the market by getting service to rural areas. That could backfire however, because it is well known that such areas tend to be lower income regions. That in turn equals out to users having a low average revenue – some of them as little as $3.90 each month.

Furthermore, the people living in Asia’s rural territories seem to prefer prepaid phones. At present, about 86 to 97 percent of the cell phone users living in rural areas use prepaid phones.

Still, wireless providers in Asia have some plans to entice new users, especially those in rural regions. For instance, some Asian countries are starting roll out initiatives. They are implementing village phones and transmission towers which can be shared from operator to operator. Others plan to incorporate tariff plans, which could theoretically backfire.

(September 3, 2008)