There is nothing like an idea whose time has come and the mobile industry continues to grow at unprecedented rates, according to The International Telecommunication Union, there were over six BILLION mobile subscribers as of the end of 2011 which represents a substantial gain over the previous two years with 5.4 billion in 2010 and 4.9 in 2009 and accounts for 87% of the population of the entire planet. This global growth is being led by China and India adding over 300 million subscribers, which is more than the entire population of the United States. These statistics indicate that the growth of the mobile market is being led by developing countries that have not yet reached a saturation point of mobile subscribers like in major industrialized nations which have at least one subscription for each person.
| Key Global Telecom Indicators for the World Telecommunication Service Sector in 2011 (all figures are estimates) |
|||||||||
| Global | Developed nations |
Developing nations |
Africa | Arab States |
Asia & Pacific | CIS | Europe | The Americas | |
| Mobile cellular subscriptions (millions) |
5,981 | 1,461 | 4,520 | 433 | 349 | 2,897 | 399 | 741 | 969 |
| Per 100 people | 86.7% | 117.8% | 78.8% | 53.0% | 96.7% | 73.9% | 143.0% | 119.5% | 103.3% |
| Fixed telephone lines (millions) |
1,159 | 494 | 665 | 12 | 35 | 511 | 74 | 242 | 268 |
| Per 100 people | 16.6% | 39.8% | 11.6% | 1.4% | 9.7% | 13.0% | 26.3% | 39.1% | 28.5% |
| Active mobile broadband subscriptions (millions) |
1,186 | 701 | 484 | 31 | 48 | 421 | 42 | 336 | 286 |
| Per 100 people | 17.0% | 56.5% | 8.5% | 3.8% | 13.3% | 10.7% | 14.9% | 54.1% | 30.5% |
| Fixed broadband subscriptions (millions) |
591 | 319 | 272 | 1 | 8 | 243 | 27 | 160 | 145 |
| per 100 people | 8.5% | 25.7% | 4.8% | 0.2% | 2.2% | 6.2% | 9.6% | 25.8% | 15.5% |
| Source: International Telecommunication Union (November 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||||||||
According to opinion from Mobi Thinking, “Mobile subscriptions outnumber fixed lines 5:1 (more so in developing nations); Mobile broadband outnumbers fixed broadband 2:1. With stats like this, it is easy to see why the experts predict that mobile Web usage will overtake PC-based Web usage. This will happen more quickly in developing nations (if it isn’t happening already) where fixed Web penetration remains low. In developed nations, this will happen more slowly. IDC believes that mobile Web usage will not overtake PC Web usage in the US until 2015. Regardless of the timescale, this inevitability makes your mobile Web strategy more important than your PC Web strategy in the long term.”
With mobile subscribers in China and India reaching nearly one billion in each country and accounting for 71% and 73% of their populations respectively, these two nations account for nearly one third of the mobile device users on the entire planet. Conversely, the United States saturation level is over 102% with over 323 million mobile subscribers. This information should make it very obvious to any company in the mobile industry that China and India are very lucrative markets to tap into.
With respect to smartphone usage, even though Apple maintains a dominate media presence, Android is forecast to control nearly half of the market share by 2015 according to research compiled by Mobi Thinking as indicated in the chart below:
| Worldwide smartphone operating system (OS) market share in 2009-2015, according to Gartner | Smartphone OS market share and compound annual growth rate 2011-2015, according to IDC | |||||||
| OS (listed alphabetically) |
2009 market share |
2010 market share |
2011 market share |
2015 market Share |
2011 market share |
2015 market Share |
2011-2015 CAGR |
|
| Android | 3.9% | 22.7% | 38.5% | 48.8% | 39.5% | 45.4% | 23.8% | |
| BlackBerry | 19.9% | 16.0% | 13.4% | 11.1% | 14.9% | 13.7% | 17.1% | |
| iOS | 14.4% | 15.7% | 19.4% | 17.2% | 15.7% | 15.3% | 18.8% | |
| Symbian | 46.9% | 37.6% | 19.2% | 0.1% | 20.9% | 0.2% | -65.0% | |
| Windows Phone/Mobile | 8.7% | 4.2% | 5.6% | 19.5% | 5.5% | 20.9% | 67.1% | |
| Others | 6.1% | 3.8% | 3.9% | 3.3% | 3.5% | 4.6% | 28.0% | |
| Total smartphones sold | 172 million | 297 million | 468 million | 631 million | 450 million | N/A | 19.6% | |
| Source: Gartner (April 2011) | Source: IDC (March 2011) | via:mobiThinking | ||||||
When studying the information above it becomes obvious that the best business model for those in the Mobile Industry to achieve maximum market penetration worldwide will be to offer products that can be utilized on Android, iOS, and Blackberry as well as ramping up for the growth of Windows Mobile which is expected to exceed the iOS platform by 2015.
According to a report from Gartner, Mobile Advertising Revenue will explode to over 20 billion dollars by 2015 with location based ads giving the highest revenues while video and audio advertising shows the most growth.
For a complete analysis of Global Stats in the Mobile Industry see the entire Compendium of global mobile stats
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