THE Philippines is one of several Asian countries seen accelerating migration to 4G, a study by the Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA) revealed.
The new report, titled “The Mobile Economy: Asia Pacific 2016,” said Malaysia, Indonesia, Bhutan and the Philippines are “previously laggard 4G [fourth-generation] markets in Asia Pacific now beginning to see an accelerating migration to 4G.”
“This is being driven by a number of factors, including ongoing network investments by operators, falling device prices [particularly from regional vendors] and growing consumer appetite for higher-speed mobile,” the report revealed.
4G mobile technology in the Philippines was said to be only 4 percent of connections, the seventh-lowest among 14 countries, the report revealed.
The number of smartphone connections in Asia Pacific totaled 1.7 billion at the end of 2015, accounting for 45 percent of total connections in the region, the GSMA study revealed. China has been the key driver of the regional (and global) smartphone market to date, with 890 million connections at the end of 2015, though growth rates are now slowing.
India is set to become the world’s second-largest smartphone market in the second half of 2016, overtaking the US, with over 320 million smartphone connections forecast for the end of 2016.
According to GSMA, India will emerge as the main driver of smartphone growth in the region over the next few years, adding close to half-a-billion new smartphone connections by 2020.
The low percentage of 4G connection in the Philippines is cast against the background of the country having a high subscription base of 72.8 million in 2015, or a penetration rate of 72 percent. The GSMA study revealed this rate would increase to 75 percent by 2020.
That pace, nevertheless, is lower than Vietnam, seen to climb at a subscriber penetration rate of 83 percent by 2020.
Still, the GSMA report noted that overall, the Asia-Pacific region would see “an accelerating technology migration to 4G, with the number of 4G connections increasing by 2.5 times over the course of 2015, and now totaling in excess of 600 million.”
The GSMA report acknowledges that South Korea, Japan and China have been the leaders in 4G adoption. South Korea has the highest adoption rate of any market globally, the report revealed.
Accelerating migration to 4G is expected to benefit operators, according to GSMA.
“For operators there is the benefit of an uplift in data consumption from the move to 4G, as observed in markets across the world.”