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European consumers spending less on mobile communications

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Sharath Kumar
New Update

CAMPBELL, USA: Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest 2G, 3G, 4G Mobile Services and Subscribers: Voice, SMS/MMS, and Broadband market size and forecasts report, which tracks mobile services revenue, mobile voice and data average revenue per user (ARPU), and mobile voice and broadband subscribers.

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"Overall, the wireless industry remains resilient and continues to perform above expectations during a period of global economic malaise and increasing mobile saturation," notes Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.

"In fact, we found that local regulatory conditions and high mobile penetration rates are the key factors affecting mobile service revenue rather than economic conditions," Téral continues, "Except in Europe, where unabated economic turmoil continues to take a toll as consumers set less and less money aside for mobile products and services, weighing on Europe's BIG 5 - Vodafone, Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, France Télécom and Telecom Italia."

Highlights

* For the full year 2012, global mobile service revenue - including voice, SMS/MMS and broadband - totaled $739 billion, up 2.5 percent from 2011.

* Mobile data (text messaging, mobile broadband) service revenue rose in all major world regions in 2012, boosted by an increase in smartphone usage.

* Though more subscribers are migrating from voice-only plans to data-centric packages, voice services are still expected to account for almost half of total mobile service revenue in 2017.

* LTE broadband is growing the fastest of any mobile services category, with an Infonetics-projected compound annual growth rate of 55 percent for 2012-2017.

* Infonetics forecasts global mobile LTE broadband subscribers to near 570 million by 2017, with most concentrated in North America and Asia Pacific.

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