Asia-Pacific demand for mobile data services increases as mobile voice declines

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: Asia-Pacific’s mobile phone market will see a continued decline in voice revenues over the next five years, as intense competition continues to push prices lower, finds Ovum.

According to new figures released by the independent telecoms analyst, Mobile regional and country forecast pack 2010-15, revenues generated in the Asia-Pacific through voice services will fall from $182 billion in 2010 to $176 billion in 2015. The trend is driven by falling ARPU in competitive markets, outweighing overall growth in connections and minutes of use.

However, the picture at the country level is patchy. India, China and Indonesia, being the growth engines of the region for new connections, show continued growth in mobile voice revenues despite falling ARPU. But in developed markets like Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, where connection markets are saturating, we foresee rapid mobile voice revenue declines,

At the same time, there will be a healthy growth in revenues generated from mobile data services, with an increase from $84 billion in 2010 to $133 billion in 2015. We foresee both rising data connections and data rising ARPU as more consumers in Asia-Pacific opt to use more text, email, social media and video on their mobiles.

Overall, we expect total Asia-Pacific mobile revenues to increase only from $267 billion in 2010 to $310 billion in 2015. However, Ovum sees total connections increasing from 2.6 billion to 3.8 billion over the same period.

David Kennedy, AP Research Director at Ovum, said, “Data is now a key driver of the mobile market and revenues will continue to grow steadily.” By 2015, there will be a much narrower gap between the revenues from voice and data and if data continues to grow at the same rate, it will eventually go into the lead.

“It is a reflection on the way the market is moving; voice services have become commoditized, while demand for access to the internet on the move has grown rapidly,” he concluded.