Operators in BRIC countries not doing enough to sell mobile data

November 9, 2005

Pyramid Research estimates that 42% of the roughly 1.05bn new mobile subscribers over the next five years will come from the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China. According to a recent study, 20% to 50% of mobile subscribers surveyed in BRIC countries said they had not received much information from their service provider about the types of mobile data services available to them or how to use them. In India and China, roughly 20% of the wireless subscribers surveyed reported they hadn't been educated by their carrier about mobile data services, while in Brazil and Russia, nearly half felt they hadn't received much information about available services or how to use them.

"It appears that operators should not be hasty in making positive assumptions regarding subscriber awareness of mobile data services; our survey suggests that as many as half of subscribers in some countries simply do not know about mobile data," comments Pyramid Research senior analyst Nick Holland. "With 3G on the horizon in most regions, it would be unfortunate if data revenues didn't materialize as anticipated due to nothing more than a lack of end user education."

The majority of wireless subscribers interviewed in the survey identified themselves as wireless data users, with only 20% saying they had never used a wireless data service. The reasons for not using mobile data varied, but roughly a quarter of non users said they saw no value to the services. More alarming to wireless operators should be the 12% of non-wireless data users in the survey who said they didn't know if the services were available to them, 20% who thought they were too complicated or difficult to use, and 10% who said they were too expensive.