Data is the rising star of mobile communications according to an analyst's review of Australian telecom service providers' performance.
New mobile data services, including e-mail, Web content and data applications but excluding SMS and MMS, will grow by 50 percent in 2008 according to the review by analyst house IDC.
"The data services have already penetrated the business space, and Web content has penetrated the consumer," IDC senior analyst, telecommunications, Waqas Javed said.
While mobile data revenues will increase significantly over the next five years with a forecast compound annual growth rate of 32.3 percent, voice revenues will remain constant. Data currently makes up around 30 percent of mobile revenues while voice amounts for approximately 70 percent, according to Javed.
The mobile data uptake has resulted in the post-paid subscriber market outperforming the pre-paid subscriber market with 11 percent subscriber growth for the quarter, versus seven percent. The post-paid favouritism is due to the larger variety of services available in comparison to pre-paid, according to Javed.
By the middle of next year, 3G subscribers will exceed 2G subscribers by nine percent and 3G revenues will surpass those of 2G by 15 percent, IDC said.
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress this week, Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo said that the telco expects 60 to 70 percent of its customers to be using its 3G mobile services by 2010, with the current percentage of the third-generation subscriber base sitting at 38 percent.
Trujillo said the company's revenue from non-SMS data services had surpassed revenue from text messaging in the first quarter of 2008.
Of course the revenue will grow - with mobile data rates many many times the price of other data prices.
Consumers getting sucked in by the whiz bang new toys - only to find they are really expensive to run compared to the failthful old laptop or home PC.
Of course corporates just write them off as a cost of doing business and claim the tax back - and the ATO are so dumb they never look at those expenses.