Below are a list of points / trends / Thoughts about the Mobile space from various sources that I have been reading over the last couple of days:
Forrester Outlook of 2014 - United States
- By the end of 2009, 234 million US consumers — 76% of the population — will have a mobile phone subscription, and the total number of phone subscriptions will approach 270 million, representing 88% of the country’s population
- Most subscriber growth will be prepaid. Those without a mobile phone are less likely to be able to afford a postpaid option: 37% of those without mobile service have a household income of less than $25,000.
- Laptop or netbook — these connected PCs will account for nearly 11 million subscriptions by 2013
- A dizzying array of devices from cars to home alarm systems to eReaders to navigation devices are available today with a cellular connection, and new options such as health monitors and connected cameras are on the way. This diversity of connected devices will result in a proliferation of wireless subscriptions beyond the traditional mobile phone.
- Mobile Internet usage will boom. As 2008 drew to a close, more than 34 million US mobile subscribers accessed the mobile Internet on their phones at least once a month. That number will grow at an impressive 52% rate in 2009 to 52 million, and mobile Net users will continue to exhibit double-digit growth through 2014, when 106 million users, or a full 39% of all wireless subscribers, will become regular mobile Net users.
- Operators’ shift from metered to unlimited data plans has been one of the critical drivers for mobile Internet and data adoption, but these plans have a downside in that they limit future data revenues while encouraging wanton usage. To manage this risk, carriers will introduce new service tiers at lower price points — with concomitantly lower data limits — that will reduce the barrier to entry for those subscribers not yet convinced that they get their money’s worth.
- Messaging +data services - these growth engines have only served to balance the concomitant decline in voice revenues — keeping ARPU nearly flat over the past few years. This trend will continue, as the growth in data subscriptions will be tempered by the introduction of lower-price voice offerings designed to maintain growth
- Data access revenues will approach $20 billion in 2014, the rate of growth will slow as the average monthly price of a data bundle decreases from $17.34 per month in 2009 to $16.64 in 2014
- Today, nearly one-third of active handsets are 3G; by 2014, more than four in five handsets will use 3G technology — whether that’s UMTS, a flavor of HSPA, or CDMA2000 — or its successor, LTE.
- Today, even the most recalcitrant voice-centric customer isn’t able to buy a new handset in this category, and these devices constitute a paltry 3% of active phones in the US market (see Figure 3). By 2014, this number will have fallen to less than 1% of all active handsets, confined to the remaining “glove box” users and those served by remote rural providers.
Economy + Internet Trends - Morgan Stanley
- Mobile Consumer - 10billion + Units
India - An interesting article in the Wallstreet journal
- Radio Via Phone - With the more than $200 million in revenues phone company executives expect this year, the radio via phone business already makes almost as
- much as consultants at KPMG estimate all the regular FM stations in India will make.
- ......requires tailored services that are delivered simply and can work even on a $20 phone.
- Monthly ARPU, Q4-2006 - 300+ Rs, Q2-2009 - <200Rs, The biggest phone companies have also started charging per second rather than per minute, further crimping the number of rupees they get from calls.
- The mobile value-added service business, which also includes standard nonvoice services like texting, will rise close to 70% in the next year to 165 billion rupees ($3.6 billion), according estimates by the Internet and Mobile Association of India.
- So far these types of services make up only about 10% of cellular companies' revenues, analysts say. But in the next five years the portion of revenue generated by these services could rise to as much as 25%, they estimate. Telephone Revenue from Non Voice Cellphone Services - 2006 - 25 Billion Rs, 2008 - 75 Billion Rs, (Estimated) 2009 - 100 Billion, (Estimated) 2010 - 160 billion Rs.
- New revenues won't come anytime soon from so-called 3G services. India has yet to even decide which private companies will be allowed to offer 3G services, though an auction of spectrum is expected early next year.
- many of India's 750,000 villages remain isolated except for the cellphone reception that now blankets almost the entire country after a decade of rapid expansion by operators
Tags: mobile - data - mobile+trends - ms - morgan+stanley - forrester - india - US - japan
Prashanth Rai
Yesterday I had a great conversation with one of the founders of 
