Despite mobile penetration being close to or over 90% in many of the regions countries, it is perhaps a surprise that Asia is still home to one the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. With the growth spurred on by the continent’s two big players, China and India, and other upcoming markets following their lead and showing promise, it only highlights the fact that the Asian telecoms market has bright future ahead of it.

As reported by Reuters earlier this month, the Indian mobile market has swollen to over 300 million subscribers, with a staggering 9 million more added every month. After having successfully broken through and exploited this increasingly affluent middle class market, operators are now directing their attention to poorer rural areas as potential markets for their services, offering low-cost handsets and cheap tariffs to attract customers.

Meanwhile, China continues to extend its lead as the single largest mobile market in the world. It’s telecoms service industry is one of the country’s prominent industries - in fact, in the past five years the industry has grown at a faster rate than the country’s GDP. As reported by ChinaView, during February 2008, the number of China’s mobile phone subscribers grew a record 9.46 million from the previous month, reaching a total 565 million mobile phone users. As is also the case with India, mobile subscriptions now dwarf fixed-line subscribers, with 362 million and 39.3 million in China and India respectively. While India and China account for over 20% and 40% overall marketshare in the Asia-Pacific region respectively, there is still room for substantial growth in neighbouring markets.

Supported by a visionary government program of stimulating development through liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation and subsequently spurred on by a creative and energetic private sector and a technology savvy population, South Korea has the potential of joining China and India as a key player. Unlike the two bigger Asian markets, hi tech gadgetry and phones have been a real drive to success for the South Korean marketplace. With camera phones, mobile gaming and an advanced mobile internet with m-commerce and m-banking enabled by a extensive 3G network all working to keep the mobile sector invigorated.

Whilst these are the big players in the Asian mobile market, other countries are seeing a huge growth in uptake with Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam all seeing growth well into double figures year on year. It seems very clear that the future is bright for all sectors of mobile telecoms in the Asian marketplace, and continued growth seems all but certain for some time to come.

Related reports: 2008 Asian - Mobile Voice Market