Telecom Lead Asia: Telecoms retail revenue in developed Asia–Pacific (DVAP) markets may fall from $217 billion in 2012 to $213 billion in 2017.
India is not part of Analysys Mason’s definition for developed Asia–Pacific (DVAP) markets. The research agency includes 13 countries in its definition of the DVAP region, including Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
The CAGR decline will be 0.4 percent during the next 5 years.
By contrast, GDP is predicted to grow overall by 3 percent during this period.
The decline in the telecoms market will be driven by the fall in fixed revenue from $86 billion in 2012 to $74 billion in 2017, according to Analysys Mason.
By contrast, the mobile sector is forecast to grow at around 1.5 percent per annum from $131 billion in 2012 to $139 in 2017.
Fixed voice connections will decline 5 percent, from 138 million in 2012 to 132 million in 2017. Mobile network connections will increase 21 percent, from 255 million to 267 million, but mobile retail revenue will decline because the average revenue per voice minute will decrease.
This growth is partly attributable to increases in mobile penetration of the population in the region (from 115 percent at the end of 2012 to 133 percent by the end of 2017) as well as increases in the percentage of smartphone SIMs throughout the period.
Smartphones represented 42 percent of handset SIMs at the end of 2012 (up from 28 percent the previous year) and this proportion will grow to 84 percent by 2017. By the end of 2013, smartphone SIMs in the region will outnumber those of non-smartphones.
In both the mobile handset and overall mobile markets, 3G peaked at 86 percent of connections in 2011. 4G will account for 63 percent of total mobile connections by the end of 2017. 4G connections will outnumber 3G by 2016.
LTE offerings are available in all DVAP countries except Taiwan, and Japan and South Korea have large numbers of subscribers.
The number of fixed broadband subscribers will grow from 75 million at the end of 2012 to 81 million by the end of 2017. The proportion of fiber-to-the-home/business connections will grow from 42 percent of the region’s fixed broadband connections at the end of 2012 to 48 percent at the end of 2017.
