Asia-Pacific Emerges as Largest Regional Telecom Market

Since the mid-2000s, it has been clear that the Asia-Pacific region will feature the greatest single concentration of communications customers and revenue mass of any region in the world, over the coming years.

So any supplier with ambitions to grow globally has to succeed in the Asia-Pacific region. That is a bit of a change from where growth drivers have been seen for much of the past decade.

Asia already by the mid-2000s was home to almost half the world’s fixed telephone subscribers. It had 42 percent of the world’s Internet users, and with 1.4 billion mobile cellular subscribers, it also had the largest mobile phone market share, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

By mid-2008, China and India alone had over 600 and 280 million mobile cellular subscribers, respectively, representing close to a quarter of the world’s total.

The Asia-Pacific region was the world’s largest broadband market with a 39 percent share of the world’s total at the end of 2007.

Telecoms retail revenue in the emerging Asia–Pacific (APAC) region was predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of seven percent between 2011 and 2016, according to Analysys Mason.

China and India together account for 68 percent of the region’s population, 64 percent of its active mobile SIMs and 75 percent of its total retail telecoms revenue.

Analysys Mason predicts that active mobile penetration rates in the region will rise to 95 percent by 2016, a 32 percent increase over 2011 levels. The number of active SIMs will increase from 2.33 billion in 2011 to 3.7 billion by 2016.

But it is 3G, not 4G, that will represent the bulk of mobile broadband customers. By 2016, 41 percent of active accounts in the region will be 3G, compared with just 11 percent in 2011.

Even by 2016, vendors cannot expect LTE devices to account for more than five percent of the active SIM base in the region.

Penetration will be slightly higher in China and Malaysia, at seven percent and eight percent respectively, slightly lower in India, Indonesia and Thailand (three percent), and even lower in Bangladesh and Pakistan.


And voice will be “mobile.” Some 90 percent of the voice connections will be supplied by mobile networks by 2016. Overall, the number of voice connections in the region will increase by 45 percent to 3.9 billion connections, with most of this growth coming from China and India, Analysys Mason predicts.

Average monthly revenue per user was about $7.40 in 2011. Mobile ARPU across emerging APAC markets will likely average $6.50 by 2016, the firm predicts.


Though Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have been leading economic and communications adoption growth for much of the past decade, it now appears that those nations are reaching maturity, and that growth of communications services will be lead by a new list of nations in the emerging markets.

Overall, that growth–on a percentage basis–will likely be lead by countries in the Asia-Pacific region, exclusive of China and India.

Globally, emerging markets remain crucial for global telecom service provider growth. IDC predicts that emerging markets will contribute for 53 percent of 2012’s global information and communications technology growth.

And a poll of 675 global IT and business professionals suggests Indonesia, Vietnam, Qatar and Myanmar are the countries to lead that growth. But Israel, Iraq, Uganda and Cambodia were other countries also viewed as countries where growth could occur.

Notably, just five percent of respondents chose Brazil, Russia, India, China or South Africa as among the nations having the strongest growth, though the so-called BRICS nations have been at the top of global growth lists for some years.

Mobile will drive growth in the Asia-Pacific region, as elsewhere. But developing nations also will become the focus of broadband growth over the next decade or two, building on a substantial amount of growth since about 2005.



International Telecommunications Union data.