Highlights from various reports on the Worldwide Wireless Market:





- Except for the U.S., Japan,South Korea and France, most wireless phone users around the world go the prepaid route.



- Prepaid customers pay a higher per-minute rate than customers under contract. But they typically make fewer calls. For wireless firms, the trade-off is that prepaid customers generally require less investment in network capacity.



- In the U.S., the prepaid market will double over the next few years, according to Merrill Lynch. Prepaid customers are expected to account for more than 20% of all U.S. wireless users by the end of 2009.



- Asia is a key battleground, since two-thirds of new wireless users are expected to come from that region.



- In China and India, more than 75% of customers are prepaid. In Japan and South Korea, they account for less than 5% of subscribers.



- Prepaid rules in Russia. There, Merrill Lynch estimates that the wireless market will double in 2005 to 119 million subscribers.



- In many of these markets, subscribers aren’t spending much. In Russia, the average monthly revenue per subscriber is $8. In China, it’s $9.



- Much of the wireless industry’s growth is coming from countries where landline phone services are limited to urban areas. That means rural consumers leapfrog from having no phone service at all to having a cell phone.But low incomes are a hurdle for firms doing business in those areas.



- In Japan, wireless firms get 25% of revenue from data. The world’s biggest wireless firm, Vodafone Group, gets 17% of revenue from data. Three-fourths of that comes from text messaging.Third-generation Internet phones could help spur data services.



- Most prepaid subscribers can’t afford pricey 3G phones that access the Internet.



- Trend: Innovate to differentiate. Carriers let wireless users automatically replenish minutes using credit cards or ATMs.



Via: Investor Business Daily