US Wireless Data Market update
by Chetan Sharma
Last week we released some numbers on the US wireless market from 1H07. US wireless data market continued its impressive growth reaching $5.85B in service revenues for the quarter. Data and Voice ARPU increased 8% and 1% Quarter/Quarter (Q/Q) respectively.
Overall ARPU increased by $1.05 Q/Q to $53.62 due to strong data performance and stable voice ARPU. The untold story has been the surprising resiliency of Voice ARPU over the past 3 quarters. Data ARPU grew 8% from Q107 and 19% from Q406 to $9.04. As estimated in our Q107 update, Verizon overtook Sprint in data ARPU with a 13% increase from its Q107 numbers to $9.84 while Sprint’s data ARPU increased only by 5% to $9.75. AT&T’s data ARPU increased by 11% to $8.77 and T-Mobile’s 4% jump accounted for its $7.8 data ARPU for Q207.
The strongest growth continues to come from Verizon, accounting for almost 31% of industry’s data revenue in Q207. Its data service revenues jumped by 13% Q/Q to $1.8B. Verizon was followed by AT&T at $1.65B, Sprint at $1.2B, and T-Mobile at $613M.
Non-messaging data revenues continue to be in the 50-60% range for the US carriers. T-Mobile recorded $644M or 53% of its data revenues from non-messaging applications and services during 1H07.
Verizon recorded 10B TXT messages in June setting a record of messaging volume at a single carrier. For the quarter 28.3B TXT messages were sent on its network. AT&T recorded 18B TXT messages for the quarter.
GSM Association announced the 200 millionth 3G mobile subscription. As estimated in our widely referenced 2005 paper on 3G, 2007 is proving to be the inflection year for many western nations including the US where the penetration crossed 15% in Q2.
The worldwide markets continue to grow at an explosive pace reaching 3B subscriptions by Q207 up 13% from 2006 levels. Significant growth is coming from India and China with both countries registering close to 7M net adds on average in Q2. India recorded 7.34M net adds (its highest) in June. In Q3, China will cross the amazing 500M subscriptions mark which is more than the next two big markets (US and India) combined. India will cross the 200M mark in Q3 and will cross US in 2008. US will cross 250M by Q4. Overall, the world market is almost at 50% penetration.
