Revenue growth in the global mobile industry is slowing, and will expand only about two percent annually between now and 2020, says the GSMA Global Mobile Trends report.
Perhaps more significantly, revenue also is shifting within the ecosystem, with more revenue being earned by content and application providers, and less from access services.
Annual revenue from voice, text messaging and mobile data will surpass $1.5 trillion by 2020, GSMA predicts.
However, as a proportion of overall mobile ecosystem revenue, the contribution from these services will fall from 41 percent today to 38 percent by 2025.
By way of contrast, revenue from content services (Netflix and Spotify, for example) will increase from three percent of ecosystem revenue today to 17 percent by 2025.
The GSMA report also argues that the “mobile Internet is the Internet.” Today, some 46 percent of the global population gets access the internet by a mobile device and network. By 2020, mobile Internet access will grow to 60 percent.
New mobile subscribers are more likely to be younger and are also more likely to be ‘mobile-first’ or ‘mobile-only’ internet users.
As there will only be a minimal increase in the number of fixed internet households over this period, the increase in mobile phone ownership will therefore be the key factor driving global internet penetration, GSMA says.
