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Australia is set to be the fastest growing market for mobile service revenue by 2025 across the Asia Pacific region.
This is according to research firm GlobalData, which predicts Australia’s mobile services market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.4 per cent from 2020 to 2025, surpassing India with 10.1 per cent, China with 7.6 per cent, Singapore with 7 per cent and the Philippines with 5.8 per cent.
Out of the overall APAC market, the CAGR for the period is set to recover this year after declining in 2020 due to COVID-19, and end the five-year period with a CAGR of 6.1 percent.
The region's growth, according to Aasif Iqbal, telecom analyst at GlobalData, is mostly due to mobile data services, which is anticipated to rise at a CAGR of 10.1 per cent over the period and will be backed up by an increase in the adoption of higher average revenue per user (ARPU) 4G and 5G subscriptions.
Indeed, monthly mobile data usage by APAC users is expected to nearly double, rising from 7.7GB in 2020 to roughly 14.4GB by 2025, due to online video and social media application habits and data-centric plans to be promoted by operators.
Meanwhile mobile voice service revenue is predicted to decline at a CAGR of 0.3 per cent over the period.
Iqbal said initial 5G deployments were hindered by the coronavirus pandemic across the region, but he had a positive outlook about future rollouts.
“Similar to all other regions, 5G service deployments by operators and its adoption by users in Asia-Pacific were affected to an extent by the COVID-19 crisis," he said.
“However, the governments and regulators across many countries in the region are working together to create a favourable business environment to encourage investment and allow operators to rollout and expand 4G/5G services further.”
Despite the significance of 5G, 4G is set to hold the largest share of mobile subscriptions in APAC during the period due to operators expanding their LTE coverage.
