 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| OUR PRODUCTS | |
 |
|
| »more | |
| CONTACT DETAILS | |
|
|
|
| WHY INFOCOM? | |
|
|
| ICT market news from InfoCom, July 26th, 2010 — Issue No. 37 |
|||||||||||
- Slovenian's spend more time talking on mobile phones than average Eastern Europeans
We hope you find this information useful. If you do not see the information you are currently interested in and need for your strategic work, feel free to call us and find out about all topics that InfoCom is presently researching. Research News |
|||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||
Higher-rate broadband garners more appeal in Taiwan From InfoCom's Teleseeq Interactive Dataroom Fibre-based broadband revenues in Taiwan grew by 47% YoY in 2009. In contrast, DSL service revenues shrunk by 20% YoY in the same period as leading market players Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) and TFN Media (TFN) continued to push for the migration of DSL subscribers to fibre and cable modem, respectively. CHT offered more affordable prices at higher bandwidths and expanded its coverage areas. As Taiwan’s market leader and owner of most of the country’s DSL and fibre network infrastructures, CHT faced little competition in retaining DSL customers with a lower bandwidth need while migrating over 80% of them to fibre-based broadband in 2009. On the other hand TFN capitalised on its existing cable TV customers to boost its cable broadband subscription. Under its “dual service discount”, existing cable TV customers may simply add $ 1.5 to $ 3 to their monthly cable TV subscription rate to avail of cable broadband access. With the promotions and discounts offered, DSL significantly lost shares to higher-rate broadband alternatives. From a share of 10% in Taiwan’s broadband service revenue in 2007, fibre access held 33% of the NT$ 25.1bn-worth broadband sector in 2009. Fibre access is expected to be the growth driver in Taiwan’s fixed broadband segment at an annual average rate of 8% from 2010 to 2015, distantly followed by cable modem at 3%. On the other hand, DSL revenue is seen to decline at an average annual pace of 6%. | |||||||||||
More than 450m 3G users in Europe by end 2015 From InfoCom's Quarterly Fixed v Mobile Broadband Monitoring Service The number of mobile subscribers with 3G-enabled handsets in the EU-27 countries reached over 204 million (end-1Q10), accounting for over 30% of the total number of mobile subscribers in the region. The increase was driven by the escalating number of affordable 3G handset models launched by manufacturers, the upgrade and significant expansion of 3G networks, as well as the push given by mobile operators for mobile broadband services. InfoCom forecasts that the number of subscribers with 3G-enabled handsets will reach nearly 455 million (or 67% of mobile subscribers) by 1Q15, an average annual growth of 17%. | |||||||||||
Pay-TV market thrives in Romania From InfoCom's Quarterly Television Monitoring Service Monitoring TV markets in Eastern Europe, one of the highest penetration rates observed in the region is that of Romania, where pay-TV subscribers represent over 80% of the total TV households in the country, followed by Hungary (80%) and Poland (71%). The key driver in the high adoption of pay-TV services is the highly competitive environment in the country resulting to significantly lower prices. The main players in the pay-TV arena are reportedly on a head-on pricing battle. In particular, UPC has already introduced price cuts on their pay-TV prices while RCS&RDS’ very aggressively launched a free subscription promo for new subscribers for a maximum of four months, depending on the number of Digi services they sign up on. Pay-TV subscribers in Romania reached 5.8m (1Q10), most of which are CaTV customers representing 48% of the total pay-TV base. Satellite TV customers, on the other hand, totalled over 2.3m (33%) followed remotely by IPTV with only 4 000 (0.1%) subscribers. | |||||||||||
Where is the mouse? From InfoCom's Telecoms Innovations - Services & Products An eye-controlled music interface, a navigating software interacting with the human body and a “mouseless” mouse — these are just a few of telecom innovations that InfoCom has been highlighting in its monthly update of its Telecom Innovations Service. While NTT Docomo came up with an eye-controlled music interface, Microsoft Labs’ and Carnegie Mellon University called their innovation “Skinput”, a prototype software that uses the human body as interface in navigating computers and mobile phones. But more recently, the spotlight has been turned to the “Mouseless”. The “mouseless” is a prototype of an invisible computer mouse, which uses infrared laser and infrared camera to track the movements of the human hand and fingers. The user needs to put his hand beside his computer and mimic the way he uses an ordinary computer mouse—only this time, a real mouse is not physically present. There is an infrared laser creating an invisible layer that illuminates the fingertips while the infrared camera is tracing the light. The hand movements are later interpreted to cursor movements. Mouseless translates the taps of index finger as left click while taps of the middle finger as right click. MIT Media Labs and Fluid Interfaces Group, the developers of Mouseless, aim to incorporate digital content in human lives and increase the interaction of the user to its surroundings by means of relevant digital information. These kinds of innovations that use the human body as interface are not far from commercialisation as large corporations such as Microsoft and NTT Docomo prove their genuine interest by being involved in as early as the research process. | |||||||||||
Eastern Europe incumbents losing market share grip in fixed voice traffic From InfoCom's Quarterly Fixed Voice Traffic Monitoring Service Alternative operators in Eastern Europe are emerging as a potent threat in the fixed voice traffic segment based on InfoCom’s latest Quarterly Fixed Voice Traffic Monitoring Service. Of the 10 countries being monitored, only BTC of Bulgaria and Teo LT of Lithuania were able to retain their shares (more than 90% in 2009) as far as volume of calls is concerned while incumbents in other countries saw their position eroding much faster. Telecom Slovenjie, for instance, lost almost 5% market share YoY in the home market. Magyar Telecom held only a little over 50% of the Hungarian market in 2009 and is on the verge of losing its predominant position in Hungary in the coming few years. As compared to the local incumbents, alternative carriers offer significantly lower tariffs and subscription rates. In terms of international calls, for instance, the disparity between the call prices of a country’s incumbent and alternative offers can go as high as 50%. As a consequence, in some countries, voice traffic has migrated from the networks of the local incumbent. In Slovakia, for instance, more than 60% of international calls are already coursed through the country’s alternative carriers. Following what we have been observing in Western Europe, incumbents in Eastern Europe are expected to further lose market shares as alternative carriers continue to offer more attractive call rates. | |||||||||||
InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries. InfoCom’s independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to improve their competitive advantage. | |||||||||||
10th ITCN Asia
 IBC 2010
 6th Asian Carriers' Conference
 Mobile Payment Services
 The technology to support mobile and contactless payments has long been in existence, yet despite significant investment by many stakeholders in the m-payment value chain, uptake of mobile payments in the developed world has been slow. Notwithstanding notable deployments in emerging markets, the mobile payment opportunity remains largely unfulfilled elsewhere. For more information please see attachment Nigeria Com
 Mobile Value Added Services World Summit 2010
 Value-added services is poised for exponential growth with more countries advancing towards 3G & 4G, enabling ever more services being offered over mobiles. The share of revenues from VAS is rising for telecom operators, as they go about adding more subscribers with declining ARPUs making the voice telephony business look unattractive. For more information please see attachment mHealth World Congress
 mHealth World Congress 2010 will be host to many high level professionals and executives coming from mobile network operators, healthcare providers for both private and public healthcare, departments of health, NGOs, telecom and healthcare regulators & authorities, medical technology & information providers, handset & device manufacturers, medical gadgets and new medical technology solution providers, open source platform developers and healthcare researchers and informatics developers. For more information please see attachment Power of Three
 The ‘Power of 3’ returns to Congress Frankfurt on 26th and 27th October 2010 with a wide range of educational conference content and a comprehensive expo floor featuring the leading IT vendors operating in these key markets – data management and storage; server, desktop and storage virtualization and IT datacenter technologies including cloud services and solutions. For more information please see attachment InfoSecurity Russia StorageExpo Documation 2010
 | |||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||