The worldwide telecoms market will reach $2 trillion by the end of 2008, according to Gartner, defying a stagnant economic climate, with 7.6% growth on last year.
Most significantly, the analyst firm points out that 2008 is the first year in history that US revenues have been eclipsed by those coming from the Asia-Pacific market.
Growth in fixed-voice services has declined and in some cases demand has begun to shrink, Gartner notes. “Legacy revenue is no longer sufficient for carriers to justify their investments,” says research analyst Will Hahn. “The growing equipment sector is being deployed to support new and converged services as well.”
“Growth in legacy markets is ebbing fast, and the only way to maintain it will be via the scope to offer converged solutions, to provide service in non-traditional sectors and to enter and win in emerging markets whose profile is very different from that in more-mature regions,” Hahn says.
He predicts that the ratio of mobile to fixed connections will exceed 4:1 by 2012, with revenue from the mobile sector “topping $1 trillion by 2010”.
“Our breakdown of services clearly shows that fixed voice is in decline, but mobile voice, though currently growing, will also stagnate as a proportion of the market by 2012. The baton has clearly been passed to data services,” says Hahn.
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