The world’s largest mobile markets in China and India saw exciting growth in 2008, bucking a slowdown and turning out to be one of the most promising sectors in the new year. India currently signs up 4 new cellphone users every second. The imminent 3G rollout in China is expected to help mobile operators raise their APRU and open up more opportunities for content and applications.
India added 10.35 million new wireless subscribers in November 2008, down marginally from October’s record 10.42 million users. The cellphone is becoming an essential lifestyle item even as handset prices are falling. The fast-growing Indian telecom industry is projected to double its mobile subscriber base to 650 million by 2012, of which 60% will come from rural India.
Total cellphone subscribers in India as of end November stood at 336.08 million, up 49% against 225 mln subscribers in the same month a year ago, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Market leader Bharti Airtel had 82.9 mln total subscribers, No. 2 operator Reliance Communication (RCom) posted 59.6 mln total users, just a whisker ahead of third-ranking Vodafone Essar with a subscriber base of 58.8 mln.
RCom is now India’s first telecom operator to offer mobile services on both CDMA and its newly-launched GSM platform on Dec 31, which will initially cover 11,000 towns and over 340,000 villages. Leading GSM operators Airtel and Vodafone had surpassed RCom with 2.72 and 2.06 net wireless additions respectively in November, while RCom gained 1.77 mln new CDMA customers.
China, the world’s largest mobile market, added 86.53 million new cellular subscribers in the first 11 months of 2008 and taking its total subscriber base to 633.84 million at end-November.
Total revenue for the Chinese telecom sector reached 746.1 billion yuan (US$109.7 bln) from January to November, up 7.6% from last year according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
China Mobile bagged 6.87 million new cellphone subscribers in November, against 7.19 mln additions in the previous month, and its subscriber base totaled 450.179 mln, equivalent to about 73.7% of the Chinese market share.
China Unicom, the second largest Chinese wireless operator, added nearly a million new GSM subscribers to reach 132.9 mln total users and China Telecom lost 430,000 CDMA subs to 28 mln total subscribers. China Telecom, the hitherto dominant fixed-line operator in the country, recently started issuing new mobile phone numbers after completing the acquisition of Unicom’s CDMA business.
Internet broadband access users in China continued to grow for the month. China Telecom added 690,000 new broadband users to reach approximately 43.6 million and China Unicom added 234,000 to reach 25.4 mln. In contrast, India’s total broadband subscriber base reached only 5.28 million by the end of November 2008.
The Asia-Pacific will be home to more than half of the world’s mobile connections, which is projected to reach 5.63 billion users by 2013, according to research analyst Ovum. China and India, as well as Pakistan and Bangladesh, will continue to be the growth engine and are expected to grow at about 12% CAGR up to 2013, rising from 40% market penetration this year to 67% in 2013.
