Mobile Data Poised for Impressive Growth - by Tom Dibble - Mar. 1st, 2004

Deloitte TMT provides a cautiously optimistic snapshot of the 2004 telecom industry. They depict an industry that will sustain itself through more sophisticated marketing of traditional fixed line and wireless voice services - while repackaging broadband services to gear up for a broader-based assault on the consumer and business markets.

At the same time, Wi-Fi, 3G, and VoIP will grow well, but not fast enough to be more than niches during 2004. As long as 2G networks predominate, the analysis continues to predict that voice will remain as the main revenue platform for mobile operators. This situation will be reinforced by continued growth in mobile subscriptions.

SMS volumes, which have driven the data market up, will start to level out in many countries in 2004. This is a given, but the U.S. will see healthy growth of SMS-based services and P2P usage as youth marketing continues and youth-oriented devices become more accessible to this market segment. Other data factors such as Internet browsing and MMS will also see growth in 2004.

Total spending on wireless communications in the United States will grow by 7.6% in 2004, achieving a total of US$144.7 billion, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association's newly released "2004 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast." The study predicts that the U.S. wireless subscriber base (wireless telephony and paging) will continue to expand, but at single-digit instead of double-digit rates. By 2007, there will be an estimated 195.5 million wireless communications subscribers, up from a predicted 168.3 million in 2004.

Japan and Korea led the worldwide mobile data subscribers figure past the 100 million mark in September 2003, reports EMC. The figure represents 7.7% of the 1.29 billion global mobile subscribers and an increase of 14% since the end of June 2003. EMC predicts that by the end of January 2004, the total number of mobile data subscribers is likely to have exceeded 115 million. Japan and Korea remain the clear mobile data pacesetters, with NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service now having ramped up 38.5 million subscribers. European data growth stems primarily from entertainment-led consumables such as ringtones, logos, gaming, and music.

Operator-branded services such as T-Mobile t-zones in Europe had attracted roughly 16 million active GPRS users at the end of September 2003. This is a quarterly increase of just under 30% and doesn't account for holiday sales of GPRS and enhanced data handsets.

As the subscriber growth rate diminishes globally, new applications such as wireless Internet access, text messaging, instant messaging, ringtones, wireless games, multimedia messaging services, and Wi-Fi technologies will drive respective markets. Wireless handset spending by end users is expected to grow faster in the coming years, fueled by accelerated replacement sales of advanced handsets and data devices. The increased competition within the U.S. market has forced operators to be aggressive with pricing as well as offer consumers better reasons to stick with a brand. The U.S. and Canada lag behind Western Europe and Japan in mobile phone penetration. Despite this, it's likely that the U.S. mobile market will be the world hotbed of growth and innovation in the short-to-medium term, and in many respects, will leapfrog a number of the Western European and Asian markets.

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