End of the Australian Boom for Mobiles?
According to a report from the Australian research group, Market Clarity, the local mobile market, which has grown by 120.6% since 2000, will only show a further 17.1% growth from 2005 to 2010. This is bad news for Australia's 3G sector, which has to compete with established 2G technologies in an already-saturated consumer market. Moreover, Australia's mobiles market has shown a growing shift to low-value pre-paid offerings which now make up nearly half the total mobile services in operation and are set to grow faster than the market as a whole, rising more than 19.2% between 2005 and 2010.
"The mobiles market has been the growth driver in Australian telecommunications for much of this decade," said Shara Evans, CEO, Market Clarity. "However, with very low potential for future growth in services, carriers will have to look to added value to grow their mobile revenues."
Evans said this is already proving a difficult task, with consumers slow to adopt high-return services such as mobile data and 3G offerings. "3G services show by far the highest average revenue per user in the mobile market," Evans said. "But so far, with about 750,000 3G services in operation at December 2005, the 3G space has yet to experience serious competition."
Evans expects that as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone ramp up their 3G offerings over the next 12 to 18 months, with increasing 3G competition placing the high average revenue per user of 3G services under pressure.
"As carriers try to convince users to convert from 2G to 3G services, we expect bundle competition in the 3G market to follow similar patterns to those already seen in the 2G market," she said. "That will mean more calls included in the bundles, more attractive on-network offers, and more inducements to use advanced services such as multimedia messaging and mobile data."
Today, Evans said, 3G services enjoy average revenue per user of over US$57 per month, but in a more competitive market this is likely to decline towards the industry-wide average of just over US$41 per month.
"In the years 2000-2005, the Australian mobile services industry underwent a huge boom, with services, revenues and call minutes all growing strongly," Evans commented. "The challenge for the coming years is to find new services to drive revenue growth in the face of a clear consumer trend towards commodity mobiles."
"In The Australian Mobile Voice and Data Services Market, Market Clarity quantified the trend towards fixed-to-mobile replacement in Australia. This, along with attractive on-network call bundling, is driving a huge growth in mobile usage," Evans said. "These changing consumer usage patterns, if exploited properly by carriers, provide the best opportunity for future growth in the market."
According to statistics from The Mobile World, the country ended last year with just over 19 million subscribers, representing a 94% penetration rate."
Posted to the site on 24th March 2006