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Any guess as to the size of the global mobile telecom services market in 2007? Money operators made the world over? According to Portio Research, during the 2007, operators worldwide generated more than $800 bn. Compared to this, India made roughly $16 bn (Rs 76,608 crore) during the 2007-08 financial year. A tiny contributor today, but the rate of growth of the Indian market will make it a big players not many years from now.

As far as future projections go, the world mobile services market will be $1 tn by end-2011. And if a projection of approximately 6.4% CAGR is really bang on, global mobile and mobile related revenues by the end-2012 will touch the $1,094.9 bn mark. Awesome! And countries of South Asia including India and China will be playing a big role to make this happen.

Falling voice-based ARPU is a global phenomenon, despite the rapidly growing subscriber base. So just like India, the world over telecom operators are now looking at new and innovative revenue streams; and mobile data services is a big focus area.

The voice-based revenue for mobile operators in India is still higher, if one compares it with the world average, which is about 81%. And by 2012 the global voice revenue will come down further to about 74%, and the remaining 26% would come from mobile data and other value added services. India will have a challenge going further, as the next phase of mobile growth in India will be in semi-urban and rural areas, where voice will be everything. Indian operators will therefore need to think about data services for the more price sensitive markets.

The Portio report gives very interesting region-wise figures for mobile data services for 2007. It accounted for about 20% of total service revenue in Western and Northern Europe; 15% in Central and Eastern Europe; 18% in North America; 10.5% in Latin America; 7% in Africa; and 11% in the Middle East. And for Asia Pacific this is 24.5%. India is obviously very low if one goes with the estimates of about 10-12% here. The need for successful mobile data services in the face of dropping voice tariffs is therefore very urgent.

Also in 2007, with 49%, SMS was the biggest contributor to non-voice revenues. But value added services like mobile music, mobile games, mobile email, mobile instant messaging (IM) and mobile video are gaining popularity, and could reduce dependence on SMS. Its contribution is expected to come down to 37% by 2012. Clearly, Indian operators have their task well cut out.

Ibrahim Ahmad