LONDON-By the year 2005 there will be nearly 120 million cellular subscribers in Asia and the Pacific, according to a new study from CIT Research Ltd.
In “Mobile Communications in Asia & the Pacific 1996,” CIT notes the region today has fewer than 22 million cellular subscribers but is experiencing phenomenal growth in digital services.
“The digital market was still quite immature in 1994,” said Rob Ollerenshaw, CIT’s director of market analysis. “But growth during 1995 went beyond even the most optimistic forecasts. The number of subscribers soared by 538 percent in just one year, and service revenues increased by 379 percent.”
At the end of 1995, almost 30 percent of cellular subscribers in the region were connected to digital networks, CIT said.
Japan claims nearly 60 percent of the region’s $18.3 billion cellular services market with more than eight million subscribers. China has 3.9 million subscribers. By 2005, CIT expects subscriber counts in those markets to rise to 40 million and 34 million, respectively.
“Total subscriber figures may look impressive,” said Ollerenshaw. “However, they disguise the huge differences that still exist between individual country markets. The average penetration of cellular phones across the Asia-Pacific region in 1995 was less than one percent*…*these figures are dragged down by the huge populations in the virtually untouched markets of India and China,” he said.
CIT said the region also has the largest installed base of pagers with nearly 53 million users. China alone accounted for half, the report said. The company projects the number of pager users in the region to double over the next 10 years.
The report said public access digital cordless services including CT2 and Personal Handyphone Service networks have an installed base of 840,000 users across the region with PHS in Japan dominating the market.
“With 70 percent of the region’s (Gross Domestic Product), Japan turns out, not surprisingly, to be the largest market for mobile communications,” the report said.
By contrast, the report notes that the region’s second largest mobile communications market, China, also has the lowest GDP per employee in the region.
“Within this enormous market, China is experiencing a series of mobile communications booms every bit as dramatic as those in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong,” the report said.
