PRESS RELEASES

Asia's voice market to boom

For immediate release, 17 July 2008. The Asian voice market will grow from 2.2 billion connections at the end of 2008 to 3.8 billion by 2017, according to new Ovum research.

Emerging markets already dominate the Asian market, with 84% of total connections in 2008. This is set to increase, hitting 90% by 2017.

In addition, the proportion of connections that are mobile across Asia will grow from 76% to 83% of total voice connections during the same period.

"What emerges clearly is that developed and developing markets in the Asian region are on different growth tracks", said David Kennedy, Research Director at Ovum. "Developed markets in Asia display similar growth patterns to developed markets in Europe, with fixed voice playing an ongoing role and tougher competition in mobile".

"But emerging markets are dominated by mobile voice, and this dominance will continue for the foreseeable future", adds Kennedy. This means that mobile will dominate the overall voice market in Asia. The typical Asian voice connection is a mobile phone in an emerging market, and this is set to be the norm for the foreseeable future.

Ovum also made specific predictions for voice growth and decline in developed and emerging markets:

Voice prices will continue to fall. Traditional fixed telephony prices will fall at an average 3.1% per annum in developed markets and 3.4% per annum in emerging markets between 2008 and 2017. In comparison, mobile voice prices will fall 5.8% and 4.7% per annum during the same period.

Voice revenues have peaked in developed markets. "We expect total voice revenues to decline 14.7% between 2008 and 2017 in developed markets as price competition bites, especially in mobile", said David Kennedy.

In contrast, emerging market voice revenues will grow 47.6% during the same period due to spectacular mobile connection growth, despite declines in mobile prices.

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For further information

For further information on Ovum's report Voice: a vision for the future - Asia update or to speak to David Kennedy about the findings, please email the PR Team mailto:prteam@ovum.com or contact a member of the global PR team listed below.

About Ovum

Ovum is a global advisory and consulting firm. Its primary activity is providing value-added advisory services and consulting to retained and project clients. The company acts as a well-respected and trusted source of industry data, knowledge and expertise on the commercial impact of technology, regulatory and market changes. Ovum engages in continuous research and industry analysis to determine market dynamics in its specialist sectors.

Ovum has developed long-standing relationships with many of its corporate clients, which include major international blue-chip companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, BT, Cable & Wireless, Cisco Systems, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Telstra and Vodafone.

Ovum is part of the Datamonitor Group.