World’s fastest growing market: India

By Andrew | July 18, 2007

If countdown begins to announce the world’s fastest growing market, then the list will start from cellular services market and will end there only. No other nominees.

This has been proved by the survey conducted by the global research firm Gartner that reveals the $9 billion cellular market is expected to deliver the output of $25 billion by 2011 registering an annual growth of 18.4 %. Plans are to three-fold the number of customers to 38.6% from 12.7%.

But where does this growth lies in?

The target is rural segment. Why rural? Lots of opportunities can be witnessed in the rural section as the mobile penetration here is only 2%. As a result of this, many telecom companies are planning to introduce handsets that will cost even less than Rs.1000. As per the research, the proportion will be 58:95 for rural area and urban area respectively.

The upward curve of the cellular market growth chart depends on various factors viz. low profit policy of the service providers, low-cost handsets and reduction in mobile tariff.
The prospective factors that may cause hindrance before the market include the quality of service (QOS), spectrum crunch and others.