UK broadband researcher Point Topic said this week that its latest figures show that emerging countries have taken the lead in broadband, with both the biggest and the fastest growing share of broadband lines.
This data comes from its quarterly forecasts and shows that over the coming five years these countries will be the main drivers of broadband growth, adding over 14% per year in numbers. By 2014 they will account for over 320 million lines, 43% of the world total of 740 million by that time.
Point Topic defines emerging nations as a group of 15 countries, including the BRICs, plus others in SE Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
Point Topic does forecasts for the 40 biggest countries and these fall into three broad groups, which it calls Emerging with under 13% take up, Youthful with between 15% and 26% broadband take up, and Mature with over 28% take up of broadband. It shows that Emerging countries are growing at 14.2% per annum, Youthful, including USA, Taiwan, Japan and Greece, are growing at 5.5% per annum and Mature just 4.6% on average.
Emerging countries have 155 million lines by mid-2009 and overtook the youthful countries to become the biggest of the groups. Annual growth in individual countries is expected to range upwards from 9.5% to over 20% in emergent economies such as Vietnam and the Philippines, as well as India.
Their average take-up is still only 4.5% and with a population of almost 3.5 billion people these countries house huge potential demand which could keep the broadband market growing for decades.
The youthful market countries are the most unpredictable. Also with just under 155 million lines at mid-2009 are only just behind the emerging countries in terms of broadband size, and they include the world’s two biggest economies, the USA and Japan. Forecast growth rates in these countries vary greatly, at only 4.0% in Japan and under 3% in Taiwan and Australia. The figure for the group as a whole is only 5.5%.
But individual countries in this group could see a rapid change in prospects, if governments set higher goals for broadband take-up for example. The key example is the USA where it remains to be seen whether the $7 billion set aside for broadband investment in the stimulus package succeeds in boosting take-up above the forecast 6% per annum.
The mature countries are all more or less approaching saturation, at least according to current market expectations. The growth rate for the group as a whole is forecast at only 4.6%, which should raise total numbers from 108 million in mid 2009 to 139 million by the end of 2014.
Outside the top 40 countries there are smaller broadband countries, some of which are both large and fast-growing, such as Ukraine or Indonesia, and they will contribute significant growth over the next five years.