Country Overview: The Philippines

                                 

With the second-largest population in South-east Asia after Indonesia, the Philippines has a large consumer base for its mobile market. Penetration in 2012 reached 106%, or 102.3m subscribers, according to a report by PwC. Filipinos are also among the world’s most prolific texters, accounting for 10% of global SMS messages.

The two major network operators for mobile internet in the Philippines are Smart Communications and Globe Telecom, which combine to make a total of 83 percent of the market share. Sun Cellular is a distant third.

3G services

The roll out of the 3G network began in 2005 when the government opened bidding on five new 3G licences. Despite having five licences on offer, the NTC ultimately granted only four, as it argued that the remaining applicants lacked the capacity to effectively provide 3G services. The four successful companies included Globe Telecom, Connectivity Unlimited Resource Enterprise (CURE), Smart Communications (owned by PLDT), and Sun Cellular. Smart Communications, having acquired CURE in 2008, was itself acquired by PLDT in 2011. As a condition of the latter deal, PLDT agreed to relinquish its CURE licence.

Delays in spectrum allocation have been a drag on the region’s 3G uptake, which has been relatively slow. Low penetration of smartphones that are equipped for mobile broadband have also dampened growth.

All the same, growing data demand and the introduction of low-cost smartphones, such as the Nokia Lumina series unveiled in the Philippines in March 2014, paint a bright picture for the future of the industry.

LTE

Smart Communications was one of the first operators to introduce 4G LTE services in the Philippines. In August 2012, it launched LTE service at bands of 850 MHz and 2600 MHz, adding additional capacity at 1800 MHz the following month. These services are already available in larger cities such as Manila, Caloocan, Las Piñas, Makati, Quezon City, San Juan, and Valenzuela, according to Telegeography, a telecoms research firm.

The company is also set to expand this service further. In March 2014, it unveiled plans to extend its 4G LTE network to all major cities by the end of 2014 – areas including Bohol, Bacolod, Davao del Sur, Tagaytay and Ilocos Norte – thus reaching 50% of the population. In addition, the P32bn ($714m) of planned capital expenditures for 2014 will include expanding Smart Communications’ 3G coverage from its current coverage of 71% of the population to 100%.

Globe Telecom, too, is widening its networks. In November 2011, it launched a $790m programme to modernise its services, including the roll-out of a 4G LTE network in Makati, Manila, Pasig, Muntinlupa, Mandaluyong, Cebu City, Boracay and Quezon City. The company’s president and CEO, Ernest Cu, told OBG that the existing network infrastructure in the Philippines was built primarily to handle SMS traffic, which requires considerably less backbone capacity than data-intensive services. Now, in addition to expanding the company’s fibre optic network, Globe Telecom is seeking to standardise the communications protocols used for voice, SMS and data in order to further improve network capacity and help in future proofing the system. In 2014, capital investment in excess of $200m has been earmarked to further expand the data network and build additional capacity, which is becoming more important given high-end customers' growing mobile data needs.

Globe narrowly leads for LTE download speed, with an average speed of 6.1Mbps., slightly faster than Smart's 5.9Mbps. Internationally, however, both speeds are comparatively slow – with Australia ranked as the fastest country for LTE in the world, averaging 24.5Mbps earlier this year.

For upload speed the results are again very close, with Smart edging ahead of Globe with speeds of 7.2 Mbps. With speeds this close, as with the close download speeds above, most mobile users will not notice a significant difference unless they are downloading particularly large files, or using some other data-intensive service.


    

Smartphone penetration

The smartphone penetration rate in the Philippines is still at a low fifteen percent according to a recent study by On Device Research. That pales in comparison to the total mobile penetration in the country of 101 percent.Smartphone penetration in the Philippines is also the lowest of all the countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia (80 percent), Thailand (49 percent), and Indonesia (23 percent).

Smartphone penetration is expected to more than triple to 50 percent by 2015. Another positive: 88 percent of the total mobile internet population is below the age of 34. 

The battle for smartphone supremacy will be fought (and won) largely on price, given that 20 percent of the population lives on less than US$1.25 a day (54 PhP). For example, local brands Cherry Mobile, My Phone, and Star Mobile offer Android phones priced between US$50 and US$250 (2191 PhP to 10,958 PhP). This range is expected to be the sweet spot that will drive further adoption of smartphones.

International brands are also getting in on the action. Chinese brands Oppo and Xiaomi plan to expand into the Philippines, while Huawei is already offering their Ascend G6 to Filipinos. Priced at US$228 (9,994 PhP), which is half the cost of the previous model known as the P6, the Ascend G6 represents the Chinese firm’s bid to capture 10 percent of the market for mid-priced smartphones.


The race to be the cell phone brand that dominates the Philippine market is wide open. At the moment, Samsung leads at 43 percent. No other cell phone manufacturer has larger than a 10 percent market share. Sony and Cherry Mobile each have seven percent, Lenovo has five percent, and LG, Alcatel, and MyPhone each have three percent.




The rising prevalence of smartphones will likely be the main driver of mobile revenues going forward, as consumers alter their preferences by reducing voice and SMS usage and increasing reliance on alternatives such Skype and instant messaging. While this may cause revenue losses with respect to these more traditional offerings, the wider range of data-driven services, such as applications, video-streaming and mobile gaming, will likely compensate over the longer term.

References: 

• http://opensignal.com/reports/2014/10/philippines-lte-report/
• http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/news/philippines-set-continue-expanding-3g-and-4g-lte-coverage
• https://www.techinasia.com/philippines-mobile-smartphone-penetration/

Nigeria: Mobile Operators Overview

In September 2013 the penetration rate was estimated at 70% over a population estimate of 168.8 million. 

21.59 million subscribers at the end of June 2013.

Source

Nigeria has 120 million mobile subscribers for 69% mobile penetration rate per capita (according to latest stats by Ericsson) and Nigerian smartphone population is 27 million (Ericsson) so about 23% of Nigerians who have a mobile account, are using a smartphone. Thus 77% of Nigerian mobile subscribers still use a 'dumbphone' or featurephone. Or if targeting featurephone technical abilities (SMS, voice, USSD, MMS, WAP) you reach more than 4 times larger audience than doing all smartphone platforms - combined (which in Africa includes large portion of Symbian still).

About 80% of Nigerian handsets are on 2G (source: Etisalat) and thus only 20% on 3G or faster, again the very basic services such as SMS, voice, WAP, USSD are part of the normal serices mix in the Nigerian (and other African) market(s). About 8.5% of the total GDP of Nigeria comes from the telecoms sector and before you say 'fixed' - landline fixed connections are less than 1% of total Nigerian telecoms. So yes, well over 8% of the total Nigerian economy is driven by mobile. 
Source

Source

India will have 520 million smartphone users by 2020: Ericsson

There's a burgeoning smartphone market in India and mobile operators have yet to take advantage of it. Ericsson believes that the number of smartphone users in India will grow up to 520 million by 2020.

In a news release obtained by the Indian media, Ericsson predicts that the smartphone penetration rate in India, which is currently only at 10% or 90 million users in 2013 will jump up to 45% or 520 million users in 2020. The company also says that the number of mobile broadband users in the country will increase from the 795 million subscribers last year to 1,145 million subscribers in 2020. That would account for a 69% rise in the number of mobile broadband users in a six-year period.

Ericsson also estimates that the average data usage per month of 155 MB in 2013 will more than double to 390 MB per month in 2017 and will reach up to 620 MB per month in 2020.

"Consumers' value broadband and their expectations around experience are evolving fast. A few years ago, access needs were limited to 'some-time,' today it is 'real-time' and it is moving towards being connected all the time with access to high-quality content," says Ericsson India head of marketing and strategy Ajay Gupta. "Smartphones and MBB (mobile broadband) services are becoming more affordable. As a result, we are seeing the advent of a new networked society in India as in other parts of the world that will benefit consumers and businesses alike."

The use of mobile broadband in India continues to rise, with social media, web browsing and chat apps such as WhatsApp, BBM and Line accounting for almost one-third of the country's mobile traffic. However, in spite of the growing demand for better mobile services, only around one-third of the roughly one-billion population are able to access the Internet over a mobile network.

Ericsson believes that for operators to fully monetize their broadband services, they need to invest in three key areas: network ubiquity, consistent app coverage and personalized charging models.

"Consumers today expect ubiquitous and high-performing networks everywhere they go. At the same time, different applications being used by consumers require more and more from the networks," says Nishant Betra, head of engagement practices at Ericsson India.

As an example, Betra cites social media, where the main experience is all about sharing text and images. In the near future, Betra believes social media will expand to cover video sharing and mobile operators will have to grow their coverage to allow their subscribers to be able to share high-definition online videos in real time.

The International Telecommunications Union, in a report released earlier this month, says 50% of all data users in 2014 will come from developing nations in the Asia-Pacific region. India, whose smartphone user base has not yet reached its saturation point, is expected to be fertile ground for mobile companies.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/6751/20140510/india-will-have-520-million-smartphone-users-by-2020-ericsson.htm