According to ABI Research forecasts, there will be over five billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2010. The first quarter by itself ended with about 4.8 billion connections with most of subscribers coming from developing markets in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.
Africa remains the fastest growing mobile market with a year-on-year growth of over 22%, while mobile penetration in Asia-Pacific will rise to 65% by the end of this year, due to increased number of users in places like India and Indonesia. ABI’s analyst Bhavya Khanna says there are two key factors that helped drive the growth in emerging markets – falling monthly tariffs and the emergence of ultra-low-cost handsets.
At the other end of the spectrum, developed countries in North America and Europe continue to add subscribers who buy new mobile devices like netbooks, tablet computers, USB dongles and e-book readers. ABI talks about Apple’s iPad 3G as a great example of a device that users like.
In addition, the introduction of faster mobile networks such as WiMAX and LTE will see more consumers ditch their cables and access the Internet through mobile broadband connections…
As always you can get more information from ABI Research’s website.