A growing industry
Data traffic has more than doubled year-on-year due to usage of smart connected devices and significant progress in mobile network technology.
Mobile telecommunications industry
An industry with 5.6 billion customers with growth driven by increasing global demand for data services and rising mobile penetration in emerging markets
Revenue and customers
- The mobile industry generates around US$900 billion of annual revenue and accounts for around 1.5% of world GDP.
- There are 5.6 billion mobile customers which is equivalent to around 80% of the world population.
- Approximately 75% of mobile customers are in emerging markets such as India and China.
Mobile services account for around 60% of telecommunications revenue with the remainder coming from fixed. Within mobile the majority of income comes from voice calls in mature markets such as Europe. However, the fastest growing revenue segment is data services such as access to the internet through laptops, tablets and smartphones.
The number of mobile customers far exceeds other forms of electronic communication. Only 1.3 billion people have fixed line telephones, 2.1 billion have access to the internet and 1.2 billion have televisions.
The mobile proportion of voice calls has increased over the last five years and now accounts for 82% of all calls made, with the remainder over fixed lines, reflecting the benefits of mobility, lower cost handsets and cheaper calling plans.
Mobile customers
March 2011: 5.6 billion
(%)
Competition and regulation
- There are typically between three to five mobile network operators per market, although in some markets, such as India, there are considerably more.
- Regulators continue to seek to impose policies to lower the cost of access to mobile networks.
The telecommunications industry is competitive with consumers having a large choice of mobile and fixed line operators from which to select services. Newer competitors, including handset manufacturers, internet companies and software providers, are also entering the market offering integrated communication services.
Industry regulators continue to impose lower mobile termination rates (the fees mobile companies charge for calls received from other companies’ networks) and lower roaming prices.
The combination of competition and regulatory pressures contributed to a 10% decline in the global average price per minute in the 2010 calendar year. However, price pressures are being partly offset by increased mobile usage leading to a 6% increase in mobile service revenue over the same period.
Mobile penetration
March 2011 (%)
The industry data on this page has been sourced from Wireless Intelligence, Strategy Analytics, Merrill Lynch, Informa WCIS and CISCO.
