Ovum says voice market booms in Asia Pacific

The Asian voice market will grow from 2.2 billion connections at the end of 2008 to 3.8 billion by 2017, according to new Ovum research.

Emerging markets already dominate the Asian market, with 84 percent of total connections in 2008. This is set to increase, hitting 90 percent by 2017, said David Kennedy, research director at Ovum.

"What emerges clearly is that developed and developing markets in the Asian region are on different growth tracks”, said David Kennedy, research director at Ovum.

“Developed markets in Asia display similar growth patterns to developed markets in Europe, with fixed voice playing an ongoing role and tougher competition in mobile”.

For the purposes of this research, Ovum defines Asia as all of Oceania, North-East Asia, South-East Asia, India and not including central Asia, the Middle East or Russia. Kennedy said it also divided this market into developed and emerging segments.

“The developed segment consists of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. The emerging markets are the remainder, including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam,” he said.

Kennedy claimed in addition, the proportion of connections that are mobile across Asia will grow from 76 percent to 83 percent of total voice connections over the same period.

“But emerging markets are dominated by mobile voice, and this dominance will continue for the foreseeable future”, added Kennedy. This means that mobile will dominate the overall voice market in Asia. The typical Asian voice connection is a mobile phone in an emerging market, and this is set to be the norm for the foreseeable future.

According to Ovum research voice prices will continue to fall, with traditional fixed telephony prices expected to fall at an average 3.1 percent per annum in developed markets and 3.4 percent per annum in emerging markets between 2008 and 2017. In comparison, mobile voice prices will fall 5.8 percent and 4.7 percent annum over the same period.

Voice revenues have peaked in developed markets and Ovum expects total voice revenues to decline 14.7 percent between 2008 and 2017 in developed markets as price competition bites, especially in mobile said Kennedy.

In contrast, emerging market voice revenues will grow 47.6 percent over the same period due to spectacular mobile connection growth, despite declines in mobile prices, he said.