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Research and Markets: Australian Mobile Market Where SMS Has Peaked and Is Now Producing a Turnover Close to $1 BillionDUBLIN, Ireland, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c16144 ) has announced the addition of 2004-2005 Australia Mobile Communications and Mobile Data to their offering. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040820/RESEARCH ) The market is slowly reaching saturation point. There is still some growth left but, with 80% penetration, new growth mainly comes from new customers (teenagers) entering the market, making revenue increases incremental relatively small. In this state of saturation, operators will have to move into new areas in order to grow. For years they have been banging their heads against the brick walls of mobile data and they kept on banging, despite the clear indication that this wasn't delivering the growth levels that had been by predicted (but never by us). The only market segment here that has been delivering new growth has been SMS, valued at close to $1 billion. However, this market has peaked, as it remains mainly confined to the youth market. Also a great deal of cost pressure is exerted in this market - with many specials that are slowly eroding revenue. The SMS has peaked, and, at best, will consolidate around current revenue figures for the next few years. The only direction the mobile companies can take to seriously increase their growth is to attack the fixed voice market and, as this has been done in Europe and North America, it is highly likely that Australia will follow. The reluctance from the operators here stems from the fact that this would further erode their revenues, as call growth can only occur through a drop in call charges - and a significant drop at that. In the USA, both national and international call charges over mobile phones are promoted at between 5 and 15 cents. In the rest of the world this substitution trend was picked up several years ago, but by the time Australia is ready to move in this direction VoIP is going to complicate the strategies involved. Soon VoIP will greatly lower the call charge barrier - and how low do the mobile operators have to go to survive in this market? For the time being there is a bit of a stand-off. For more than 18 months now Vodafone has been threatening to move in this direction; however they also indicate they don't want a price war and it looks as though, once again, they are not very committed. Hutchison is chipping away and is a really disruptive force in the mobile market. The next 6 to 12 months will tell us where this industry is going. One thing is for sure - the golden decade for the mobile operators is now well and truly over. This annual report offers a wealth of information on the Mobile market, covering: - Market and industry analyses, trends and developments. - Facts, figures and statistics. - Industry issues and regulatory. - Research, Marketing, Benchmarking. - Major Players, Revenues, Subscribers, Prepaid. - Spectrum Auctions, Developments, Government Policies. - Infrastructure, GSM, CDMA, 3G. - Mobile Data - Market Issue, Paging, Dedicated Services. - SIM, SMS, MMS, GPRS, EDGE, WAP, M-Commerce. - Telemetry, Location Services, Bluetooth, PMR, TMR. - Mobile Satellite Services. For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c16144 Laura Wood Senior Manager Research and Markets [email protected] Fax: +353 1 4100 980 Web sites: http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c16144 Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040820/RESEARCHAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected] Research and Markets CONTACT: Laura Wood, Senior Manager of Research and Markets,[email protected] , or fax, +353-1-4100-980 |