U.S. Wireless Data Market Update – Q2 2009

Some of the more interesting highlights from Chetan Sharma’s Q2 ’09 U.S. Wireless Data Market Update, include the following:

• Wireless Data Market grew 7% Q/Q and 30% Y/Y to $10.6B in revenues – ahead of Japan and China (no recession here).
• Shift from postpaid to prepaid – prepaid constituted 82% of quarterly net adds, up from 21% in Q2 ’08
• Landline replacement has now reached a whopping 24%.
• Smartphone penetration should exceed 25% in Q3 ’09.
• M2M (machine-to-machine, i.e., wireless chips/service on other devices) getting a lot of carrier focus as growth area (AT&T has new bus unit and Verizon & Qualcomm have new JV)
• Avg. data % contribution to ARPU should hit 30% in 2009 in US
• App stores all the rage – non-messaging services continue to get 50-65% of US data revenues
• App Store vs. Mobile Web discussion growing. Seems reasonable that native app platforms will be better for apps requiring significant UI resouces (e.g. games) while Mobile Web better for other apps – particularly since Mobile Safari now incorporates location API access.
• Growth in smartphone data usage putting pressure on networks
• VC market declined to 1.2B for 1H ’09 from $2.1B in 1H ’09
• India net adds were 140M in last 4 quarters vs. 100M in China

Advertisement