Australia lagged behind the rest of the Asia Pacific region in mobile phone subscriptions last year, according to new figures released by Gartner Dataquest.
In 2000, the number of subscribers in Asia Pacific reached 230 million, a 52 percent increase over 1999 results. In the same period, Australian mobile phone subscribers reached 10.3 million, indicating a 36.9 percent increase over the previous year's results.
In terms of mobile penetration, the research group says Australia still lags behind its regional peers with 54 percent penetration, compared to Hong Kong with 77 percent and Singapore with 74 percent.
"A number of factors have seen the mobile market growth in Australia lag behind other mature markets in the region, including the delayed introduction of mobile number portability which in comparative terms has slowed down growth and price competition locally," said Nick Ingelbrecht, principal analyst, Gartner Dataquest, mobile research group.
In 1999, there were 151 million mobile phone subscribers in Asia/Pacific. Regional growth was led by China, which had mobile subscribers totalling 85.3 million in 2000, up from 43.3 million subscribers in 1999.
There was strong demand for mobile Internet services across the region with an estimated 34.4 million regular users in the region at the end of 2000, a rise of 29 percent. Japan and South Korea dominated the region's mobile data market, accounting for 26.8 million users and 7 million users, respectively.
"The steady growth in mobile Internet usage in the region is laying a solid foundation for much faster adoption once subscribers start to realise the benefits of packet data services toward the end of this year," Ingelbrecht said.
Meanwhile, Vodafone says its March quarter net mobile phone customer connections in Australia were up 38 percent to 150,000 on a year ago, taking its total Australian customers to 2.11 million.
"In the year ended March 2001, Vodafone Australia's customer base grew 47 percent, attracting 674,000 customers during those 12 months," the world's largest mobile phone company was quoted by Reuters as saying.
