After the handset, jacking ARPU

So you sell a jillion handsets into the next global hotspot. What’s next?
The true believers at the 3GSM conference last month, for instance, said that rapid penetration of under-served, emerging markets could actually spur economic development. With economic development comes rising personal incomes, fueling the uptake of data services and growing average revenue per user, which notoriously lingers in single-digit-dollars-per-month in many nascent markets.
For this particular recipe for success, first consider the vast volumes of people yet to connect wirelessly and the possible speed with which they may do so.
It took 12 years to connect the first billion of the world’s subscribers and less than three years to connect the second billion.
“We anticipate there are 3.8 billion people still without mobile connections,” John Frederik Baksaas, CEO of Telenor ASA, told 3GSM attendees in Barcelona, Spain.
Telenor has made strides in Central and Eastern Europe, which will grow some 17 percent this year, according to Strategy Analytics, well above the industry average. While North American languishes with 4 percent growth this year and Western Europe with 3 percent growth, the Asia-Pacific region is forecast to grow nearly 14 percent. Central and Latin America are projected to grow 8 percent. The “rest of world”-which may include the much-sought, next hotspot-is projected to grow nearly 15 percent.
To Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., that means many new global subscribers will get their first exposure to retail music via handset, skipping the music industry’s current compact disc medium. Warner Music is working with carriers to do just that in China, South Korea and North Africa.
Another aspect of emerging markets that put dollars signs in corporate eyeballs? Banking. Mobile handsets can serve to transfer funds between people and between people and vendors in areas with scarce banking opportunities-at least according to W. Roy Dunbar, president of global technology and operations for Mastercard International.
“The rate of mobile payments could parallel the adoption of mobile communications in the developing world,” Dunbar optimistically told an audience at 3GSM.