Ovum has unveiled its take on Asia-Pacific’s trends in 2011 for the telecoms industry, both from fixed and mobile sectors.
In the mobile space, 2011 will be dominated by increasing smartphone and wireless broadband take-up. Attractive smartphones will also proliferate more into the prepaid segment this year. But while the data traffic boom will continue unabated, operators will struggle on to seek answers on ways to monetise data. “We are already seeing some innovative new broadband pricing strategies emerge to milk incremental ARPU from customers, but this year the monetizing data dilemma will keep many senior executives awake at night”, shares Nicole McCormick, senior analyst.
On the fixed side, David Kennedy, research director believes that the growth of next-generation access is the trend to watch. “The continued growth of household data traffic, driven by growing demand for video services is putting pressure on older networks. We are now seeing major fiber rollouts in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Fiber is already entrenched in Hong Kong, Korea and Japan. The Asia Pacific region is increasingly the leading region for fiber access, and we expect to see big investments here in the coming year and beyond. More operators will imitate the leading companies to pursue service bundling, fixed value-added services, and in-home devices in an effort lock in household revenue.
For service providers, Ovum expects wireline revenues in the region to decline slightly in 2011, but mobile revenues will rise 6% to US$317B, supported by 10% growth in China and 15% in India. Total revenues in AP, fixed plus mobile, should grow at roughly the same 4% rate achieved in 2009 and projected for 2010. Service provider capital expenditures (capex), which eked out 1.2% growth in 2009 in AP, are on track to fall 11% in 2010 but we expect a 5% bounceback in 2011, with the Indian mobile sector a key contributor. Looking beyond 2011, we expect the ratio of capex to revenues (capital intensity) to continue falling: from 23.7% in 2008 regionally, the ratio should hit 19.7% in 2010 and 18.8% by 2015. Matt Walker, Ovum principal analyst, notes that this is still well above the global average of under 16%, as many markets within the Asia Pacific remain relatively unsaturated, retain strong economic fundamentals, and will outperform global averages for many years to come.
