The explosive growth in wireless data service revenues, mobile
applications and smartphone device unit shipments during the past two
years is spurring a dramatic shift for the global cell phone industry says Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst with iSuppli.
Global revenue for wireless data services,
excluding messaging, is projected to grow by 26.2 percent to reach
$87.7 billion in 2009. This follows 57.1 percent growth in 2007 and a
60.3 percent expansion in 2008 for total data revenue among the world's
wireless carriers. iSuppli is forecasting that total data revenues of
carriers worldwide, excluding messaging, will grow to approximately
$188 billion by 2013.
In contrast, total revenues for all services
offered by the world's wireless carriers will remain roughly flat at
approximately $866 billion in 2009.
Mobile applications, such as those on Apple's App Store, are key to stimulating the data service revenue growth.
"Clearly,
mobile data revenue is key to the continued health of wireless carriers
and the cell phone value chain in the future," Rebello said. "In this
battle, ownership of customers and who can monetize data services and
applications are up for grabs."
Apple's rejection of Google Voice is a dramatic illustration of this fight for data revenues.
"By
introducing applications and services that allow customers to make
calls and send text messages without paying the operators, wireless
operators have no incentive to invest in network upgrades," Rebello
said. "This is the reason why many carriers are pushing out the
upgrades of their networks to 2010/2011, compared to 2009/2010 before.
With billions of dollars in expected investments, the stakes are huge
for the wireless carriers."
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