Gothenburg, Sweden 24th March 2005: Revenues in the Nordic mobile communications market grew by 4.0 percent during 2004 to € 8,200 million, according to a new report from the Sweden based research firm Berg Insight. “We expect little or no growth in the coming three years. However the composition of revenues will gradually change as voice revenues decline, while revenues from data services grow”, says Tobias Ryberg, Principal Analyst at Berg Insight.

Voice revenues are under increasing pressure from low cost service providers who are challenging established players with flat rate pricing models. Telmore and CBB Mobil very successfully implemented low cost strategies in Denmark and were consequently acquired by TDC and SONOFON respectively. Now TDC is exporting the Telmore concept to other European markets through its partnership with easyMobile. Telenor brought the discount concept to the Swedish market through djuice and was quickly followed by Tele2. “Today Sweden has among the highest prices for voice calls in the Nordic region, but we expect that differences between the countries will gradually disappear”, says Tobias.

He adds that lower prices can be beneficial for mobile operators since it attracts additional traffic from fixed lines to mobile networks. This fixed to mobile substitution trend is already visible, especially in Finland where 39 percent of the households only use mobile phones for voice calls. Nevertheless the Nordic mobile operators will to an increasing extent have to rely on data services to generate new growth in the future.

Tobias however believes that the market conditions in the Nordic region are fundamentally favourable. Therefore he expects that the Nordic countries will remain at the forefront of the adoption of new mobile services. One example of this leadership cited by Tobias is that Norway is one of the first countries where MMS messaging has taken off in earnest. Moreover the Nordic wireless M2M communication market is surging and until 2010 at least 1 million new connections will be added in the utility segment alone after decisions by leading energy companies to install automated meter reading.

                     

Find out more in Berg Insight's new report: Nordic Wireless Market 2005