Asia Pacific mobile market still lags behind North American and European counterparts despite growing industry: Research

The Asia Pacific mobile market remains lagging behind North America and Europe in terms of overall penetration rate.

According to a report by London-based GSM Association, this continuously pulls the region down despite being home to giant mobile markets such as China, Japan, Indonesia and India — four countries that account for over three-quarters of the region’s 37 percent of the world subscriber base.

The region’s population, at first glance, seems to be its strongest asset as population size has always been an attractive target for expanding mobile entrepreneur and investors. However, the report revealed that its enormous population, which remains largely unpenetrated, has become the region’s heaviest burden.

“There are a number of markets in the region with substantial populations but that are still relatively underpenetrated by mobile services, markets that will be a key source of incremental subscriber growth going forward,” the report detailed.

Indeed, connecting the populous but still unconnected regions is the challenge that investors and new market players need to overcome. For instance, average unique subscriber penetration rate of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, despite its combined population of over 1.6 billion, play only around at 36 percent. Myanmar is also a bit behind other Asian countries as it had only recently liberalized its mobile market this year, which it did by licensing two new 3G operators.

However, the penetration quandary in the region could also be its boon in the near future. In the first quarter of 2015, the region recorded over 1.8 billion new unique subscribers and nearly 3.7 billion connections, the fastest in the entire globe. Meaning to say, the unpenetrated markets have become an attractive targets for entrepreneurs in the mobile-telecom industry.

Among which is American network enhancer provider 5BARz International (OTCQB: BARZ) . One of the company’s main goals is to help every mobile market solve their network-related problems through their plug-and-play technology.

“When we first talked with Tier One companies in India our main target was to provide them customer-focused solutions to their call drop problems, which had been their problem for more than a decade now. The ‘call drop-solving segment’ in India remains untouched—and it was so big that it became our very first target market. Solving a national predicament that immense is an irresistible challenge to the company,” CEO Daniel Bland said.

Almost 49 percent of the world’s total unique subscribers and 51 percent of the world’s connections are coming from the Asia Pacific region. Another outstanding feat is that most governments have now realized their slow response in enhancing investments coming in their respective countries.

The report further said that the Asia-Pacific region is expected to obtain additional 600 million subscribers before 2020 ends, with unique subscriber penetration expanding by 12 percentage points. The full use of the 700-MHz spectrum, additionally, would potentially create an additional 2.1 million jobs over the same period.

The GSM Association revealed that the key to sustained growth is a continued support from the governments in the region.

"Therefore, governments have a major role to play in the development of a digital society, both in terms of creating a supportive environment for innovation and investment, and by harnessing digital channels to provide effective and efficient public services,” the report concluded.

Innovation will help the region improve its global standings in the penetration category. The constantly improving mobile milieu, which remains focused on China, will lead the way in the deployment of advanced mobile services and voice over LTE services. In the next years to come, several sub-markets will gain more access to several essential services such as financial services, education and healthcare due to the improvements in Asia Pacific’s mobile market.