Will emerging markets drive mobile growth over the next 5 years?

There’s a new and interesting report coming from our Pyramid friends that I would like to share with you. It suggests that the emerging markets will drive mobile networking growth over next five years. In their opinion, despite the current global economic downturn, the number of mobile network subscribers worldwide will continue to grow at a rate of nearly 8% annually through 2013, with 90% of that growth coming from emerging economies.

Some of the findings of the report are shown above.

1. Mobile Subscriber & Revenue Forecast 2008-2013: Emerging Market Opportunities delivers a complete five-year worldwide forecast for mobile network subscribers, including market penetration rates by region and service revenues by region. The report also identifies the top 20 national growth markets over the next five years and provides comparative current data on average revenue per user (ARPU) by region.
2. “Worldwide mobile subscriptions will grow from 4.0 billion this year to 5.85 billion in 2013, for a compound average growth rate of nearly 8%,” notes Leslie Arathoon, Vice President of Research at Pyramid Research and co-author of the report. “About 90% of the new subscriptions will come from emerging markets.”
3. Asia-Pacific, already the world’s biggest market for mobile services by subscriber count, will continue to be the top region for mobile subscriber growth, while Africa and the Middle East will surpass other regions to become the second-largest mobile market by subscriber count by 2013.

Other key findings of include the following:

A) Between 2008 and 2013, the number of mobile subscriptions will increase from 4bn to 5.85bn, at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9%. Africa and the Middle East as well as Asia will account for the biggest subscriber gains, while Europe will see its share of the global subscription base shrink.
B) By 2013, global mobile subscription penetration will top 83%, compared with an expected 60% penetration rate at year-end 2008.
C) The global market for mobile voice and data communications services will be worth US$908bn in 2008. We expect market revenue to grow at a CAGR of 6.0% over the next five years to reach $1.2 trillion by 2013.

If you want additional detail on this, feel free to refer to pyramid’s site: http://www.pyr.com

Best regards

CVA, Khartoum