Mobile broadband service revenue to more than double by 2014
Revenue collected by service providers for cellular services totaled $675 billion in 2009, and is expected to top $829 billion by 2014, says Infonetics Research in its latest report.

Mobile broadband service revenue jumped 36 percent in 2009 and between 2010 and 2014, mobile broadband revenue will more than double, adds the report.

Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure, Infonetics Research, said: "Total mobile monthly ARPUs are still trending down across the board, despite fast rising mobile broadband revenue that partly offsets the decline of voice and SMS, which have been affected by new tariff regulation in the middle of a global recession, prompting many subscribers to shift to prepaid accounts."

Moving forward, a two-race game is developing: how to keep up with the onslaught of low ARPU prepaid customers, and how fast can messaging and mobile app downloads replace phone calls as the major revenue drivers?, notes Téral.

The number of mobile broadband subscribers is expected to reach 1.8 billion worldwide by 2014, or 28 percent of total mobile subscribers. The number of LTE subscribers is forecast to reach 153 million by 2014, mostly in Asia Pacific and EMEA, adds the report.

Due in large part to the high concentration of mobile operators in developed markets in Western Europe with good HSPA coverage, the EMEA region leads the mobile broadband race, having outpaced early 3G adopters such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
 
In emerging Asian economies such as China and India, data revenue, including SMS and mobile broadband, is already having a positive impact on total ARPU, more than offsetting the rapid decline of voice ARPU that's occurring despite double-digit percentage annual increases in voice traffic.

W-CDMA/HSPA revenue will almost be seven times that of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO revenue by 2014, as the majority of worldwide mobile subscribers are on GSM networks.