Data from Wireless World Forum?s ?Russian Mobile Market 2006? shows that Russia experienced the largest percentile increase in subscriber numbers in 2005. Russia is the most developed of the BRIC countries in terms of penetration rate and the fourth largest mobile market in the world, behind China, India and the USA, ahead of the Japanese and Brazilian markets.
Russian operators reported 118.9 million subscribers in 2005. Wireless World Forum estimates that equates to 99.9 million owners after discounting duplicate and inactive accounts.
Prepay popularity underpins the current growth in mobile ownership with both VimpelCom and MTS seeing a fall in the number of Postpay accounts. Prepay growth caused a 25% fall in blended ARPU resulting in a modest 24% rise in operator revenues to $9.0 bn pa.
Annual growth will slow by 35% to 2% in 2006 as the 20-45 demographic reaches a 100% penetration rate. Long term prospects for growth will include signing up the under 15?s and over 45?s as well as optimising spending on data services.
Data Contained in the Report on:
Data from Wireless World Forum?s ?Russian Mobile Market 2006? shows that Russia experienced the largest percentile increase in subscriber numbers in 2005. Russia is the most developed of the BRIC . . .