2018 Asia - Mobile Infrastructure and Mobile Broadband

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Last updated: 6 Jun 2018 Update History

Report Status: Archived

Report Pages: 764

Analyst: Phil Harpur

Publication Overview

The countries covered in this report include: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor Leste,  Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

For information on Asia Fixed Broadband see:- Asia Fixed Broadband - Statistics and Analyes report.


Researchers:- Phil Harpur
Current publication date:- June 2018 (14th Edition)

Executive Summary

Asia’s mobile market continues to be driven by mobile broadband

Asia’s mobile and mobile broadband markets continue to see solid growth. The overall mobile penetration rate on average across the entire Asian region reached over 102% going into 2018, up from 83% back in 2012.

The mobile broadband subscriber base across all of Asia continues to grow very strongly. With 3G, 3G+ and 4G platforms extensively covering the region, mobile broadband services have already become well established.

Asia’s total mobile broadband subscriber base as a proportion of the total mobile subscriber base continues to grow. The total mobile broadband subscriber base across Asia is now equivalent to just over 50% of Asia’s total mobile subscriber base

Whilst there are still developing markets continuing to grow their mobile subscriber base at moderate to high annual rates, there are in fact few countries left in Asia with significantly underdeveloped mobile markets and low mobile penetration rates.

Total mobile subscriber market growth will continue to ease off over the next five years as the remaining lagging mobile markets now head toward saturation as has occurred in the more mature markets such as Japan, Hong Kong Macau and Singapore.

Although the rate of increase of mobile broadband subscribers has subsided as the initial rapid rollout of services has slowed down, the growth rate is still reasonably strong. There is still significant growth opportunity left in the market over the next five years to 2023, especially in some of the less developed Asian markets that are still dependant on voice networks for mobile services.

This BuddeComm annual publication provides a country level analyses of the 34 mobile subscriber and mobile broadband markets across Asia. It includes information on each country’s mobile and mobile broadband markets, key market statistics and key information on the mobile infrastructure markets of each of these countries.

Asia is arguably the world’s most diverse region with regards to its telecoms industry. The region contains a vast array of countries, ranging from those with highly mature and advanced telecommunications markets, that are world leaders in the move towards 5G, such as South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, to some of the poorest and least developed countries such as North Korea and Afghanistan.

The Buddecomm Telecoms Maturity Index, has been devised as a tool to easily and uniformly compare these different markets. BuddeComm’s “Asian Telecoms Maturity Index”, is an index (on a scale between 0 and 100) that measures and ranks the relative maturity of the telecoms industry in all of the 34 countries in Asia. This report provides a comprehensive comparison of the 34 Asian markets according to a number of parameters such as fixed broadband and mobile broadband.

Phil Harpur
June 2018

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