Telecom services market is expected to reach $1,441bn in 2009, a marginal increase of 1.7%, compared to $1417bn for the same period last year, the lowest growth rate since 2002, according to a report from Idate.
The firm said that the telecom services market have some very strong assets that will help put it back on track, including the fact that consumption volumes continue to rise apace with the growing user base. The growing internet services market is no longer fully offsetting the decline in fixed line calling, and the growth rate for mobile services revenue continues to shrink, decreasing by two-thirds between 2007 and 2009.
According to the report, the total mobile services sales were estimated at $755bn in 2008 and at $785bn in 2009. The mobile services nevertheless remain the chief driving force behind growth as a whole, accounting for more than half of all telecom services revenue worldwide for four years running, and generated more than twice as much income as landline calling.
The firm said that the mobile market’s growth is being sustained by a huge rise in customer numbers which grew by 14% worldwide in 2009, up to 4.5 billion.
In 2009, the number of fixed lines shrank with average revenue per line decreasing by around 2% annually for the past two years. Fixed telephony has decreased in value by 11% in three years and, at the end of 2009, it accounted for only 26% of the telecom services market worldwide, compared to around 33% in 2006.
The data and especially internet services continued to increase from 0.5 to 0.7 points annually since 2006. Their share of the total market reached 19% in 2009, up from 17% in 2006 and less than 15% in 2001.
Idate said that the number of broadband subscribers grew by close to 63.3 million, and expects to reach the 500 million some time in 2010. At the end of 2009, broadband access accounted for three quarters of all internet connections around the globe.
The firm predicts that, by 2015, a total of 380 million subscribers in the US, the EU-5, Scandinavia, China, Japan and South Korea will have access to mobile data services over LTE networks.
Carole Manero, project leader of the ‘World Telecom Services market’ report, said: “This decline is due to structural phenomena, i.e. the maturity of the markets that have driven growth in the past, namely mobile telephony in industrialised countries, combined with competitive and regulatory pressures whose impact has been further aggravated by the economic downturn.”
