Informa: Mobile broadband Subscriptions Surge Ahead

There were more than 225 million mobile broadband subscribers (all technologies) at the end of March 2009, representing 93% year-on-year growth, according to Informa Telecoms & Media's latest World Cellular Data Metrics report.


Penetration of mobile broadband remains at its highest in Asia Pacific (over 90 million subscribers), while growth is most notable in Latin America (385% year-on-year growth to over 10 million subscribers).


Informa notes that the evolution of the device market has also contributed to a surge in mobile data traffic. Informa estimates that the increased usage in non-voice services has resulted in mobile operators recording total data revenues of US$46.5bn during 1Q09, which is an 8.5% y-o-y increase on the corresponding period in 2008. The value of the non-voice market for the whole of 2008 was over US$180bn, accounting for over 20% of total service revenues.


The spread of the iPhone continues to boost data usage for those operators that distribute the model with O2 reporting that 40% of its data traffic in UK comes from the smartphone market. Once the preserve of the corporate segment, the consumer market is now driving the evolution of the mobile data market. And yet, the value of the global data market has decreased by 1.8% in the last quarter due to the data market is "global currency exchange volatility."http://www.informatm.com/itmgcontent/icoms