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Surprising faith in mobile broadband - "will replace voice revenue" - ABI

Eyebrows may well rise in some expert circles, following a surprise prediction by ABI Research dismissing the idea of voice revenue collapse.

The report says:

"ABI Research estimates that ARPU decline is likely to flatten out in developed markets in Europe and North America as mobile data revenue increasingly replaces falling voice revenue."

That cuts across the main thrust of the report which suggests that average user revenue is crumbling generally:

"Mobile end-user ARPUs (average revenue per user) dropped between 6% to 9% globally, year-over-year in 3Q-2009, compared to 3Q-2008."

Insiders contacted by NewsWireless suggest this analysis is possibly confused. "Smartphone customers are still a tiny proportion of phone users," said one senior phone company executive. "We're seeing reckless competition for voice and data (text) market share in the standard handset market, and worryingly, we're seeing a big gap between today's limited 3G data, and LTE availability."

The ABI report acknowledges the problem:

“With the decline in voice revenues, mobile operators must aim to increase the uptake of mobile Internet services and revenues to defend their ARPU,” says analyst Bhavya Khanna. “Mobile data traffic has exploded in the past two years, and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 40% from 2009-2015. Operators can cash in on this demand by enlarging their mobile broadband coverage, thus increasing their user-base. This has started to happen in developed markets such as the UK and US, where mobile Internet service revenues have grown over 12% and 8% YoY respectively.”

Full press release here