More Saudi Arabia IP Communications Stories

Saudi Arabia not only has a large mobile market it is projected to continue to grow.

According to a new Pyramid Research study, the Saudi mobile market is one of the biggest in either the Middle East or Africa – and is one of 17 globally which has over 150 percent mobile penetration. In fact, Pyramid said that the Saudi Arabian telecom market reached $13 billion in revenue last year.

Saudi Arabia’s mobile market has been “strengthened” by a few trends, such as “liberalization policies” and the introduction of new technology, according a press statement from Pyramid Research. LTE (News - Alert) was introduced in Saudi Arabia during September 2011.

In addition, Pyramid Research predicts operators will “aggressively … expand these networks.”

“We expect growth to continue over the next few years, at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 4.2 percent from 2011 to 2016 to reach $17.2bn in 2016,” projects Pyramid Research in company statements. “The market will continue to lean heavily toward mobile data consumption. The commercial launch of LTE service, predicted to be a significant driver of mobile data consumption, will be part of the reason for the positive growth trend.”

Mobile data revenue will more than double to $4.2 billion between 2011 and 2016, Pyramid adds. Projected mobile voice service revenue for 2016 will be $8 billion, Pyramid said.

In addition, Pyramid predicts that mobile voice services will see “negligible” decline – from about $8.2 billion in 2011 with a CAGR of -0.7 percent through 2016.

Pyramid further projects segments with the quickest growth will be fixed VoIP (which will have a 37.3 percent CAGR between 2011 and 2016) and pay-TV (which will have a 21.8 percent CAGR between 2011 and 2016). “Revenue in these areas is only expected to be $198m and $166m, respectively, by 2016,” Pyramid adds. “As dial-up service continues to decline, we project broadband Internet to grow by 10.2 percent from 2011-2016, leading to strong revenues of about $2.4bn in 2016. Fixed circuit-switched voice will also experience modest growth to reach $2.2bn in revenue in 2016.”

More information is contained in Pyramid’s study called “Saudi Arabia: Management & Improvement of LTE Rollouts Boosts Operators and Vendors.”

In other recent technology news about Saudi Arabia, a Saudi prince – who is worth billions of dollars – and his holding company have decided to take some of that money to invest $300 million in Twitter (News - Alert), the popular microblogging site, according to TMCnet. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, who is chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), made the investment in collaboration with the holding company.