Warc, 19 June 2014
SINGAPORE: Smartphone subscriptions in Southeast Asia and
Oceania are predicted to grow fivefold over the next five years and will
account for over half of the region's 1.3bn mobile subscriptions new research
has said.
Communications technology business Ericcson released an
appendix to its recent Mobility Report to illustrate the differences across the
region with respect to smartphone uptake, access to LTE, and network
performance. It reported that mobile data traffic would grow twice as fast as
smartphone subscriptions – tenfold – between 2013 and 2019.
The primary reason for this was the region's youth
population of more than 170m. "Youth are active users of apps, especially
messaging apps, and in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia nearly one-third
of the population is aged 10-24," noted Arun Bansal, Head of Ericsson's
Region South East Asia and Oceania.
"In these countries we also observe that the smartphone
is the primary device for internet access and as smartphones become cheaper,
more consumers will be able to enjoy the benefits of connectivity," he
added.
Separate research from IDC suggests that it is not only the
smartphone market that is growing rapidly: shipments of tablets to the
Philippines were up 110% year on year in the first quarter of 2014, the highest
in the region, Marketing Interactive reported.
While Samsung and Apple were the market leaders, IDC noted
that home-grown vendors such as Cherry Mobile and Starmobile were gaining
ground among budget-conscious Filipino consumers. This trend was being pushed,
according to Jerome Dominguez, associate market analyst at IDC Philippines,
"by cash-rich marketing and A-list celebrity endorsements".
But no matter which device consumers are using, Bansal
observed that the anticipated growth in mobile traffic would require the
creation of high performing networks "to keep up with more complex user
demands".
Currently Australia and Singapore account for almost all of
the 20m LTE subscriptions the region will have by the end of 2014, but
developing markets are expected to take a greater share over the next five
years as networks are deployed in more countries.
By 2019, LTE subscriptions in the region are projected to
reach 230m , a penetration rate of around 20%.
Data sourced from Ericcson, Marketing Interactive;
additional content by Warc staff
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