[2007-07-13]  Study Finds Middle East Mobile Market Booming
With penetration set to cross the 50 percent mark and over 150 million handsets in circulation as well as a 30 percent growth rate in 2006, the Middle East is now only trailing Africa as the fastest-growing market.

Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia represent almost 70 percent of total connections in the Middle East. In these markets, the average market penetration is around 67 percent--- 17 percent above the average market penetration rate.

Turkey is expected to reach almost 60 million cellular connections by the end of this year, a 14 per cent growth year-on-year.

Today, telecom carriers are focusing on Saudi Arabia to increase their consumer base. Being the region’ largest economy, Saudi Arabia has 27.6 million inhabitants and is the most populous of all the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

“Mobile penetration in Saudi Arabia was 80.4% in the last quarter, but there is still room for growth, as penetration rates in the other wealthy Gulf Emirates: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are in excess of 100%,” the report notes.

The Saudi telecom sector generated US$10.7 billion in revenues in 2006, of which US$8.1 billion was from the mobile sector.

The sector also grew 18 percent year-on-year in 2006 and made up 3 percent of the GDP. Moreover, Saudi Arabia accounts for 15 percent of total connections in the region. At the end of 2006, Saudi Arabia passed the 20 million connections mark, and the market is expected to grow by almost 20 percent this year.

In fact, Iran has lower market penetration (30 percent) but it is growing more rapidly than Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Iran had 20 million cellular connections last quarter and is expected to grow by around 63 percent this year, adding almost 10 million new connections.



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Source: Technology Marketing Corp. 1997-2007 Copyright