Asia - Mobile Data and Wireless Broadband Market
MUMBAI, February 11, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
The line between mobile communications - voice services as opposed to broadband services - is becoming blurred by the rapid uptake of smartphones.
This makes it more difficult to produce reports with a clear delineation between the two sectors. This report concentrates specifically on the mobile broadband developments and therefore, in the developed mobile communication markets in particular, it does not include statistical and other information on the underlying mobile communication part of the market - for example, general statistics on mobile subscribers and revenues.
That information can be found in our other report on this market:Asia - Mobile Voice Market
The countries covered in this report include: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.
Executive Summary
The highly developed telecom markets of Asia signal where the overall mobile data and broadband wireless market is heading With some 3.6 billion people across Asia using mobile phones - around 52% of the number of mobile subscribers in the world - spread across a diverse range of markets, the region is already rapidly advancing in its exploiting of mobile data/wireless broadband services.
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Asia - mobile services - total mobile and mobile broadband - subscribers/penetration - 2011 - 2014
Category 2011 2012 2013 2014(e)
Mobile subscriptions
Subscribers 3,000,000 3,205,000 3,457,000 3,604,000
Penetration 76.5% 80.9% 86.4% 89.2%
Mobile broadband subscriptions
Subscribers 432,000 605,000 753,000 920,000
Penetration 11.0% 15.3% 18.8% 22.8%
Growth across Asia in high speed access to the internet by mobile wireless has been largely driven by highly competitive markets combined with preparedness to embrace new generation mobile technologies. With 3G and 3G+ platforms extensively covering the region, mobile broadband services are already well established. The rapid take up has been underpinned by increasingly cheaper smartphone prices and lower airtime tariffs combining to support even wider adoption. And now, of course, we have 4G/LTE providing a fresh impetus, especially in the region's pace-setting markets. By end-2014 mobile broadband subscriptions in Asia totalled just over 0.9 million - about 40% of all the mobile broadband subscribers in the world.
The more highly developed markets in the region, such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, have positioned themselves well to generally exploit mobile data and broadband wireless opportunities and lead the rest of the region into the next generations of mobile applications. As 3G transitions through 3.5G and onto 4G/LTE and we see consequential increases in speeds, as service improves, as content providers offer more services, and over-the-top (OTT) services gain greater traction, an exponential growth in data usage is occurring in the major markets. Hong Kong is a prime example of this explosion in mobile data. (See table below)
Hong Kong - mobile data usage - 2002 - 2014
Per 2.5G + 3G/4G
Year(Dec) Total subscriber
Mbytes
2002 42,000 0.2
2003 247,200 0.3
2004 2,330,400 1.7
2005 4,603,700 2.5
2006 9,076,700 4.1
2007 32,301,500 11.0
2008 133,145,700 38.1
2009 638,388,700 127.6
2010 1,847,525,600 295.6
2011 4,133,960,500 508.7
2012 7,674,492,900 762.6
2013 12,073,456,300 996.6
2014(Oct) 15,694,435,800 1,230.2
While 3G licensing and the ongoing launch of 3G services in Asia has certainly provided the fundamental platform for growth in wireless data services, 3G has also been providing opportunities for both wireless access and content providers in domestic markets. In South Asia, in particular, more people own a mobile phone than a PC, giving the delivery of mobile data services huge potential there. Although one can obviously say that in terms of system sophistication 'the show has moved on' in the more advanced markets, 3G is continuing to provide the basis for ongoing development of mobile data across much of the region.
It should also be noted that mobile data is by no means a new phenomenon in the region. An example of the early widespread adoption of a particular mobile data service in Asia was the Short Message Service (SMS). SMS became very popular throughout Asia ahead of the wider market, with remarkable growth being experienced in particular in the Philippines and Malaysia, as well as in China.
The business plans of the majority of mobile operators have been built on the assumption that the key to further revenue growth lies not just in accumulating more and more subscribers, but in the ability to offer more Value-Added Services (VAS) and, most importantly, efficient and effective access to the internet. This in turn allows the operators to pursue higher ARPUs based on offering genuinely greater value added services plus improved quality to customers.
Another early move into mobile data within Asia was Japan's NTT DoCoMo launching its i-Mode service and its two rivals -SoftBank and KDDI - following with the launch of their own versions of i-Mode. The result was dramatically successful as an early push into largescale mobile data services; at its peak over 80% of mobile subscribers in Japan were logging on from a mobile using one of these platforms.
More recent mobile data development in Asia has essentially been built on the 3G and 3G+, now 4G/LTE technology. As a consequence, right across Asia, with the transition to a range of new generation mobile platforms, there has been a major shift from mobile voice to mobile data.
A good example of the way in which next generation networks have been progressively reshaping the mobile markets across the region can be found in Singapore. (See table below.) By August 2014 the number of mobile subscribers stood at 8.2 million for a penetration of 152%; most significantly, of these subscribers 7.9 million were signed up to 3G or 4G services. That meant that just the 3G and 4G subscribers combined represented a population penetration already well in excess of 100% by that stage. In other words, Singapore had far more mobile broadband subscriptions than population.
Importantly, 4G/LTE already has a significant presence in the Singapore market. The three mobile operators all launched a form of 4G in 2012 and have since been rapidly expanding their coverage at a rate that effectively saw a full national presence by end-2013.
Singapore - Mobile subscribers - 2G, 3G and 4G, prepaid and postpaid - August 2014
Percentage of
total subscriber
Category Subscribers base
2G subscriptions
Postpaid 98,500 1%
Prepaid 218,600 3%
Total 2G subscribers 317,100 4%
3G subscriptions
Postpaid 1,901,900 23%
Prepaid 3,199,600 39%
Total 3G subscribers 5,101,500 62%
4G subscriptions
Postpaid 2,626,200 32%
Prepaid 184,500 2%
Total 4G subscribers 2,810,700 34%
Total subscribers
(2G+3G+4G) 8,229,300 100%
Although the two sample markets noted above - Hong Kong and Singapore - are obviously exceptional in that they are both geographically compact (which delivers a major advantage in the roll out of networks), we should nevertheless take careful note of the way things are developing as these markets provide useful models for how the wider market is likely to move.
Regionally, overall mobile broadband penetration was around 23% by early 2015. This represented a total of 920 million mobile broadband subscribers across the region. The number of mobile broadband subscribers was growing at around 25% annually.
In the context of mobile broadband services, we should not ignore the WiMAX platform. Whilst there has been some activity in the providing of fixed WiMAX networks, the real test has been the advent of mobile WiMAX. The roll-out of WiMAX-based mobile services in Asia has begun; however, significant rollouts have been limited to just a few markets. The technology is looking more and more like a platform suited for niche markets. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia have notable WiMAX roll outs.
Key operators in the region have been investing heavily in WiFi and the deployment of femtocells for mobile network offload. South Korea for example, saw an 11-fold jump in mobile data traffic over a one year period and WiFi traffic accounted for a third of all mobile traffic.
Table of Content
1. Regional Overview
2. Afghanistan
Third Generation (3G)
Overview
Background
Bidding process
Licensing
Service launches
Mobile data services
Malomat
Mobile banking
Satellite mobile
3. Armenia
4G / LTE
Wireless broadband
Cornet-AM
ICON Communications
VivaCell-MTS
4. Azerbaijan
Statistics
WiMAX
AzQtel
Mobile Data
Trunk Mobile Radio (TMR)
Third Generation (3G) services
Fourth Generation (4G) / Long Term Evolution (LTE)
Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE)
5. Bangladesh
Mobile data services
Mobile broadband
Mobile services - university admissions
Mobile banking
Wireless broadband / WiMAX
Background
WiMAX licensing
Operations
Third BWA licence
TD-LTE (4G) licences
Network expansions and roll-outs
WiFi
6. Bhutan
3G mobile services
4G / LTE mobile services
7. Brunei Darussalam
Statistics
8. Cambodia
Statistics
WiMAX
Overview
Frequency licensing problems
Smart
Digital Star
Long term evolution (LTE) network
Digital Star
Southeast Asia Telecommunications
Smart Axiata
9. China
Third Generation (3G) mobile
Background
3G development
Fourth Generation (4G) mobile
Background
Service launch and development
Voice over LTE (VoLTE)
Pre-5G
Mobile Data
Short Message Service (SMS)
M2M
Mobile applications
Mobile internet
Forecast: 3G mobile subscribers
10. Georgia
Third Generation (3G) mobile
Background and licensing
3G mobile statistics
4G / Long Term Evolution (LTE)
WiMAX
Warid Telecom Georgia
VTel Georgia
MagtiCom
Mobile broadband
11. Hong Kong
12. India
13. Indonesia
14. Japan
15. Kazakhstan
16. Kyrgyzstan
17. Laos
18. Macau
19. Malaysia
20. Maldives
21. Mongolia
22. Myanmar
23. Nepal
24. North Korea
25. Pakistan
26. Philippines
27. Singapore
28. South Korea
29. Sri Lanka
30. Taiwan
31. Thailand
32. Turkmenistan
33. Uzbekistan
34. Vietnam
Plus many more...
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