In populous states such as India, numbers play a big role in bolstering revenues for mobile operators. This year, the number of mobile connections in India are expected to touch 815 million, making up 12% of total connections in the world. Gartner Inc, a leading research and consultancy company shared this figures in its latest report, the “Forecast: Mobile Services, Worldwide, 2012-2018, 2Q14 Update" and "Forecast Analysis: Mobile Services, Worldwide, 2Q14 Update" Gartner said that these figure represent an 8% increase in the number of connections this year.
According to Gartner, although the number of connections showed steady growth, mobile operator revenues are expected not to improve much from year 2013, which posted USD19.2 billion in revenues. While some countries are seeing bouyant growth in the take up of data plans and higher revenues from data, India is experiencing a trend where a large chunk of users are using 'Over-the-Top' apps for their voice and messaging needs, and at the same time, are opting for smaller and cheaper data packages. This has resulted in a 'transitional' gap in revenues where data revenues are still at their intial growth phase while traditional voice and messaging revenues are slipping away due to the higher usage of OTT apps.
Mobile Operators in India therefore stand to boost their revenues in coming years by tapping into the increasing appetite for the use of data for all communications, information and entertainment needs. In a market made up of users with different price sensitivities, operators will benefit from rolling out a wider variety of data plans that meet all levels of budget and that cater for different applications and content preferences.
“The mobile market in India is going through a rough patch, where voice average revenue per user (ARPU) is falling very fast, and the increase in data ARPU is not able to fully compensate for the decline. If the prevailing market conditions do not change in the Indian mobile market, India will account for 12 percent worldwide mobile connections, but just 2 percent of worldwide mobile services revenue. Mobile broadband provides a substantial revenue opportunity in India on the back of low fixed line broadband penetration. Packing and selling mobile broadband in small and affordable chunks is critical to uptake."
- Neha Gupta, Senior Research Analyst at Gartner
