Oct
25
2007
BITKOM has published a report which reveals a few figures on the state of the mobile nation:
- 36.5 million mobile phones will be sold in 2007 (a plus of 6% compared to 2006. Not digging into the detailed demographics based on 82 million inhabitants that is a shiny new phone for about every second German who is able to talk)
- on average 100 Germans use 109 active contracts (Western Europe’s average is 98, the US lacks behind a bit with 76)
- carriers will make 4.2 billion Euro in revenues in 2007
- 57 billion minutes of calls have been made from mobile phones in 2006 and 22.5 billion SMS have been sent
- when asked mobile data services are considered to be useful but hardly used yet. The prognosis is that this won’t change in the near future: only 20% are estimated to use them by 2010 (the biggest obstacle for a wider adaption seems to be intransparent pricing schemes; you usually need to use a pocket-lens to discover the price per MB but how much does it cost me to look up a restaurant on Qype or to download a track again? A few flat rate plans for data starting at 10 Euro have become available but they all are tied to 24 months contracts.)
October 26th, 2007 at 2:15 am
You write that it’s not likely to change that people don’t use mobile services in Germany. Well, I can say you this: Within about six months, the Austrian market for mobile internet has changed extremely fast. Mobile internet is now starting to become a commodity, cheap prices, too.
The iPhone will make Nokia, Samsung, Motorola et al create new, “mobile internet enabled” phones. (Nokia already announced the first device!) This will increase competition, too.
Expect to see more and more mobile internet phones over the next year!
October 26th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Hi Markus,
Good question! How much does it cost to look up something on Qype mobile? Well, we’ve made efforts to ensure the pages are as small as possible, so if you load the homepage and execute a search, and find your place, it’s around 10KB. If a typical data plan currently costs EUR3/MB, then it’s around 0.03 cents a go. Not bad, even without unlimited data! Of course if you start to browse maps etc it’s a little more, but still not bad.
Coming from the UK, I’ve had unlimited data for a flat rate of around GBP10 for about a year now, with T-Mobile. I’m sure this must be coming to Germany very soon too.
Cheers,
Phil