Forecast on leading telecom markets in Asia Pacific region

Research firm GlobalData has revealed the top telecom markets in the Asia Pacific region in terms of mobile service revenue during 2020-25.
Main telecom markets in Asia Pacific

Australia’s mobile service revenue is forecast to achieve compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.4 percent, the fastest growth in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region between 2020 and 2025, according to GlobalData.

Australia will lead the APAC region in terms of mobile service revenues as 5G service adoption starts growing in Australia with all the three major operators such as Optus, Vodafone Australia and Telstra expanding their 5G networks.

India will achieve mobile revenue CAGR of 10.1 percent over the forecast period, supported by rising 4G service adoption in the country. Top telecom operators in India are Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Reliance Jio.

Mobile services revenue in Asia Pacific, which declined in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will recover in 2021 and maintain a CAGR of 6.1 percent between 2020-2025, mainly driven by mobile data service segment, GlobalData forecasts.

Mobile voice service revenues in APAC will decline at a CAGR of 0.3 percent over the forecast period as a result of falling voice average revenue per user (ARPU) levels. Mobile data service revenue is set to increase at a CAGR of 10.1 percent over 2020-2025 period, supported by the growing adoption of higher ARPU 4G and 5G subscriptions.

The average monthly mobile data usage in APAC will increase from 7.7GB in 2020 to about 14.4GB by 2025, with surge in the consumption of online video and social media applications on the back of data-centric plans promoted by the operators.

4G will account for the largest share of mobile subscriptions in the region, supported by the continued efforts by operators to expand LTE coverage and deliver high speed services to users. For instance, Vodafone Idea and Airtel in India, Telenor and Ooredoo in Myanmar and NTT and Rakuten in Japan have been aggressively investing in LTE network expansion.