Informa Telecoms & Media: Prepaid mobile to capture 80% of global subscriber growth; multi-SIM...

Informa Telecoms & Media reports that during 2007 and into 2008, the market for prepaid mobile services has continued to grow more than twice as fast as the contract market. At the end of 2007, there were 2.33 billion prepaid subscriptions in the world, of which nearly 2% were accounted for by prepaid WCDMA accesses. Prepaid services generated US$241.9 billion in revenues for mobile network operators in 2007. By far the largest prepaid market was Asia Pacific, with 43% of global subscriptions and almost 30% of revenues. The number of people owning multiple SIMs continues to rise, and at the end of 2008 about 28.9% of reported subscriptions worldwide will be accounted for by secondary or tertiary SIM card ownership. Operators may be forced to consider whether issuing SIM cards is a sustainable way of increasing the lifetime... [read full story]