Study Looks at Strategies for Low-ARPU Markets

Portio Research has released its report, The Next Billion: Strategies for driving growth and making profits in low-ARPU mobile markets.
Portio notes that since the first mobile phones reached the hands of consumers at the end of the 1980s, it took approximately 15 years for the first 25% of the human race to subscribe to mobile services, and that the next 25% look set to sign up by mid-2008, when the 50% global penetration mark is expected to be reached.
The report looks at where the growth is set to come from after that, at who will be the next billion, where they live, and how much money will they have to spend on mobile services. The report also offers detailed demographic analysis of the top growth markets, and the strategies network operators are using to penetrate these markets.
The report concludes that the next billion are actually 1.5 billion in number; that they will take the world from 50% penetration to 75% penetration in just four years; that 65% of them live in Asia; and that almost 70% of them live in rural communities
Portio says it has studied the top 10 growth markets of the next four years, and has identified that nine out of 10 of those markets have one key defining factor in common: they are all low income per-capita markets compared to the wealthy nations that have made up the bulk of the first 3 billion mobile subscribers.
The report looks at these country markets in detail and identifies the extent of the urban and rural communities in these countries. It looks in detail at the United States and explains how the wealthiest nation in the world is forecast to be the third biggest growth market of the next four years, and what that is worth in financial terms. The report forecasts subscriber growth, ARPU to 2011 and service revenues from 2006 to 2011, as the US marches towards a $200 billion market.
The report also analyzes what strategies are being used to penetrate low-ARPU rural markets, and as rural subscribers in India and Bangladesh head towards monthly ARPU of $3 or $4, asks whether network operators can maintain margins. The report concludes that five of the top 10 growth markets are in South Asia. It further forecasts that these five big Asian growth markets will add over 815 million new mobile subscribers over the next four years, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union, the US, Australia and New Zealand combined.
The report costs 1,495 for a 1 5 user PDF team licence; 1,995 for a small or medium- size PDF company licence; or 2,995 for a large corporate PDF unlimited licence. For more information and details of how to order, click here.