China, India will lead in mobile market by 2011: study

Friday, 20 April 2007, 19:30 IST
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New York,: China and India will remain the world's growth engine for wireless services by 2011, accounting for 60 percent of the 1.2 billion predicted new mobile subscribers over the next five years, according to a report. The report, by Global Insight, the world's leading company for economic and financial analysis and forecasting, Thursday compares the world's 20 leading developed and emerging markets between 2006 and 2011, and predicts that over the next five years, market penetration of wireless services will grow from 34.8 percent to 69.1 percent in China and from 13.4 percent to 31.0 percent in India. According to the report, China will also outpace the other 19 markets in terms of broadband growth, accounting for more than one-third of the 350 million-plus new broadband subscriptions. By 2011, China, with broadband revenues of more than $19 billion, will surpass Japan as the world's second-largest broadband market. However, the US will continue to maintain its position as the world's largest mobile and broadband market by revenues over the forecast period. "The bulk of the revenues for the sector will still come from the developed markets. Another notable conclusion is that the so-called death of the landline has been overstated, even if traditional landline revenues will take a massive hit," said Julian Watson, director of Global Insight Telecom Products and author of the Special Report, "Substitution Shakes Up the Telecom Sector." More than $50 billion in revenues will be lost worldwide over the forecast period due to fixed-line subscriber declines and the migration of voice traffic to mobile and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) networks, according to the report. A 4.5 percent decline is predicted in traditional fixed-line accesses as the growth in the Chinese and Indian markets fail to offset the erosion of traditional accesses in markets like Japan, South Korea and Europe where there is already an extensive migration of accesses from fixed lines to mobile, said the report.
Source: IANS