Telegeographyis calling the top of the trillion-dollar communications market,
saying that traditional markets are saturated, and new growth must
come mainly from Asia and Africa.
The market analyst made the call following publication of first
quarter sales figures for communications companies. These showed a
slowdown over the previous quarter, but low single digit growth
over Q1 08, it said.
The top 20 global service providers generated $251bn in sales
during the first three months of 2009, which was 3% up on Q1 08 but
1% down on Q4 08.
The top 10 telecoms technology suppliers generated sales of
$59bn during the quarter. This was 5% down from Q1 08 and 15% down
from the previous quarter.
Mobile phone carriers added 153 million new subscribers, but
this was 10 million fewer than the previous quarter. Almost half
the wireless subscriber growth came from India and China as growth
slowed in many other markets. Countries like France, Germany,
Italy, Poland, Ukraine and the UK were all essentially flat or down
slightly, it said.
There were 14 million new broadband subscribers, in line with Q4
08 additions. China accounted for 30% of global growth, with the US
the only other country to add more than one million subscribers in
the quarter.
Telegeography said the global recession was affecting the
market, but it still believed that the global telecoms service
market was approaching saturation in many developed markets.
"Historic growth in this market has been over 6% but
Telegeography forecasts that growth will decline to an average 3.5%
over the next five years," the company said. It noted that the
reported 3% growth included the fruits of mergers and acquisitions,
and was not just organic growth. The best organic growth came from
China Mobile, Vodafone and America Movil, it said.
Telegeography said sales of wireless and broadband services were
"a bit on the soft side", but still showed "decent growth" despite
the recession.
Telecoms equipment vendors had been hit hard by the "triple
whammy" of lower spending by consumers, service providers and
enterprises. Traditional suppliers like Nokia, Cisco, Motorola and
Alcatel-Lucent were hardest hit, with Nortel dropping out of the
Top 10 altogether, it said. But newcomers like Huawei, Samsung, RIM
and LGE had some cause to be pleased, the analyst said.
Wireless Subscriber Growth, Q1 2009
Source: Telegeography