According to the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), the market for mobile phone services will probably grow by 6.6% to 578 billion Euros this year. The turnover generated by mobile phone calls alone is predicted to increase by 4.2% to 454 billion Euros, according to the EITO market research institute. Another boom is predicted for mobile data services which are expected to grow by 16% to 124 billion Euros of turnover.
Despite the economic crisis, the mobile phone market will remain a growth market thanks to new applications and attractive devices. Thus, the European mobile phone market is predicted to grow by 2.4% to reach a volume of 144.5 billion Euros, according to BITKOM.
Mobile communication is set to be given new momentum by increasing data traffic which accounts for almost one quarter of total turnover generated in the mobile phone business. “Reading of emails, downloading of music or sending photos is nowadays part of standard applications offered by modern mobile phones“, says Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer who is BITKOM chairman. As a consequence, turnover generated through mobile data services in Europe is predicted to increase by 8.4% to 33 billion Euros in 2009 and that generated through mobile phone calls by 0.7% to 111.5 billion Euros.
A little bit less dynamic than the growth of the European mobile phone market as a whole is the development of the German market. According to the forecast by EITO, total turnover generated in Germany is going to increase by 0.3% to 22.3 billion Euros in 2009. Nevertheless, there will be a boom in internet applications for mobile phones and notebooks in Germany too. Thus, turnover generated by mobile data services is expected to grow by 8% to 5.5 billion Euros this year.
With regard to mobile phone calls turnover is expected to decrease by 2% to 16.8 billion Euros due to falling prices, even though an ever growing number of people is calling for an ever longer period of time.
The biggest country market in Europe is Great Britain (ahead of Germany). Turnover generated there is estimated to grow by 3.8% to 26.4 billion Euros. Mobile data services will probably increase by 9.8% to 7.1 billion Euros and turnover generated through mobile phone calls by 1.7 percent to 19.2 billion Euros. France is the third biggest European country market for mobile phone services. Here turnover may increase by 2.8% to 20.4 billion Euros in the year 2009. 