By 2022, the global mobility market size is predicted to cross 9.7 billion subscriptions along with an increase in the penetration rate growth from 65 percent to 73 percent. The penetration growth is reaching saturation in regions like North America and Europe because of the market being highly mature. In the Asia Pacific region, the developed markets for mobility services includes countries such as Japan, Australia, and South Korea while countries like India, China, Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are still in developing stage. In the next five years, the global penetration rate for the mobility market is projected to reach 70 percent of the global population.Regions of Latin America and emerging Asian economies such as China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are expected to be major growth drivers for the mobility market.
What Are Mobility Solutions?
Mobility solutions utilize wireless technologies to enable its users to roam freely while being connected with the network. Although the word ‘wireless’ was earlier used to refer to radio transmitters, now in the modern world, it is used to describe modern connections that are wireless like cellular networks and wireless broadband internet that typically use radio waves for transmission.
The technologies used in mobility solutions are divided on the basis of service and data transferring speeds. These include different generations of data services such as first generation, second generation, third generation and so on.
Market Size and Analysis
In 2017, the total market size of the mobility market in terms of subscriptions was 5 billion users. Due to the rise in the standard of living and improved mobile connectivity, the overall size of the market is set to expand exponentially. In terms of adoption of technologies like 3G and LTE, both have crossed 90 percent and 55 percent of global coverage respectively.
As discussed above, the North American and European mobility market has reached the saturation level and there is a minimal scope of growth in those markets. Due to high saturation levels, the penetration and subscriber growth will remain low until 2020 in these regions. Even after saturation of the mobility market in North America, service providers are not facing any loss of mobile revenue due to the increase in data traffic and consumption rates. In fact, North America is estimated to be the biggest market for mobile subscriptions for the 5G network until the year 2020.
Mergers and acquisitions have become an ongoing trend in the European region, which has led to the consolidation of the market. This trend is estimated to continue for the next 4-5 years.
Industrial Trends And Advancements
Due to rising competition and customer expectations, the mobility market has been undergoing rapid changes in the last few years, which is expected to continue in the upcoming years as well. The switching of consumers towards OTT (Over the top) applications like Viber, Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and Google Voice over calls are contributing to the growth of the mobility market. Over the top applications are those services and products that do not follow traditional distribution networks but rather use the internet as a means of distribution.Enterprises are also adopting mobility services due to data incentives and big data services such as SIP trunking and VoIP services, trying to focus on higher operational efficiency and enhanced productivity. Sectors integrating mobility solutions with their operations include the banking and financial sectors.
The increase in the demand for cloud-based services is also contributing to the growth of the mobility services market.The sharing of files and audios on smartphones and tablets are contributing to the increase in the demand for high-speed data and internet services.
Challenges Facing The Mobility Market
The regulations in the telecom industry related to data and its prices are very strict in most countries. Due to these strict regulations, many companies face problems in opening and providing services and products in specific areas and requires certain licenses for operations.
Also, due to numerous service providers being present in the market, customers tend to change from one operator to another in case of facing any negative experience. The service providers tend to face difficulty in trying to retain customers. Due to rapid advancements in technology, operators face many challenges in the deployment of newer technologies to maintain efficiency and competition.
The challenges facing the mobility market are formidable, but they do not pose any serious challenge to the growth prospects of the industry as of now. Though the degree of competition might be increasing in the market, the overall size and growth prospects of the mobility market are positive.
