Asia Pacific Mobile Handset Market Growing

Asia Pacific is the most rapidly changing mobile handset market in the world. Last decade was the period of tremendous growth for the market. Mobile telephony was the main cause of the growth. Asia Pacific has seen the emergence of 12 major countries' market as powerhouse in the last 5 years. Japan and South Korea are the mature markets. Their service providers have to look for solution to retain the viability of their businesses as the service prices are declining and subscriber base figures has risen nominally only.

New-gen wireless networks have demonstrated their profitability whereas the launch of 3G services received plausible ROI. The new entry in the competition and a new revenue generator is value added services. This service is showing its presence in extremely technologically advanced markets, like South Korea and Japan and those markets that has the world's highest penetration rate, like Taiwan and Hong Kong.

According to a forecast for mobile market, competition in 3G sectors is anticipated to aggravate, specially in the mature mobile market where the addition of subscribers is restricted. In an attempt to compensate the declining voice ARPU from price commoditisation, South Korean operators will lead those from other countries to try to elevate the usage of data with changes to more advanced platforms like HSDPA/HSUPA, to permit premium applications.

Mobile penetration would jump to 37% by 2010 from 23% of 2005. The rising popularity of the prepaid services in the region is the leading cause of mobile adoption. It continues to decrease entry barriers for new demand. The variation in maturity, network technology, per capita income, competition, growth potential and service adoption in markets draw big differences in each of these markets.

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