Global mobile service revenue barely budged in the first half of 2014 (1H14), up just 0.5 percent from the same period a year ago, badly dragged by Europe again, according to a new report from Infonetics.
Overall, growth in telecom revenue continues to slow in every geographic region. Europe’s 5 largest service providers—Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, and Vodafone—continue to experience declining revenue, though less pronounced than in the past 3 years. And in North America, AT&T and Verizon have signaled that the mobile services price war started by T-Mobile US is taking a bite,” says Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.
Co-author of the report Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics’ directing analyst for enterprise networks, adds: “After a weak 2013, enterprise networking and communication revenue growth accelerated in 2014 thanks to a resurging North American market and stepped-up investments in security infrastructure. We expect similar results in 2015, when strong end-user demand in North America and Asia Pac is likely to be offset by a slowdown in Europe.”
Some other highlights:
- Macroeconomic indicators point to moderate global economic growth of 3 percent for the full-year 2014 due to persistent weaknesses in the Eurozone and a significant slowdown in Brazil and Russia.
- Mobile data services (text messaging and mobile broadband) rose again in every region in 1H14, driven by the increasing usage of smartphones.
- Mobile broadband services grew 26 percent year-over-year, enough to offset the decline of SMS revenue.
- Key trends affecting the enterprise networking and communication markets include the adoption of cloud services, the use of cloud architectures in enterprise data centers, and security becoming a part of every IT decision.
http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2014/1H14-Telecom-and-Datacom-Market-Trends-and-Drivers.asp