Cash cow
Analyst Chetan Sharma has published a half-yearly assessment of the state of the mobile industry, which was brought to our attention by GigaOm.
The headline figure for his comprehensive overview is that he expects total global mobile revenues to hit $1.3 trillion this year, which is almost two percent of total global GDP. That means one fiftieth of all global production is directly attributable to the mobile industry.
Within that figure Sharma expects total mobile data revenues to top $300 million, of which more than half is non-messaging. Mobile data traffic will be 95 percent of total mobile traffic by 2015. Despite the rapid growth of Data, voice charges still account for over half of that $1.3 trillion figure, with devices only making up 15 percent.
There are 56 slides in total, which we've embedded below, but here are a few that caught our eye. The UK isn't even in the top ten countries in terms of mobile subscribers, but is seventh by total revenue and fourth by data revenue (slide 8). While Vodafone and Telefonica as send and third in terms of subscribers, they're only fifth and eighth by data revenue (slide 10).
While China has had the most mobile subscribers for some time, it looks like it has just been overtaken by India (slide 19). Also, while ‘others' account for 29 percent of total handset market share, they only account for ten percent of smartphones (slide 22).
It looks like things are set to get tougher for operators, as the general trend is for revenues to move away from them towards platforms and apps. Revenues per text message, voice minute and data MB have all been falling rapidly (slide 42). In the patent tussle currently underway, it looks like Samsung and Nokia are in the strongest positions (slide 47).
