Asia leads mobile growth, but lags on Internet

By Khettiya Jittapong and Arada Therdthammakun

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Asia will continue to deliver strong growth in the mobile phone market due to sustained demand from China and India, the world's two biggest markets of such services, industry officials said.

But, even if Asia is the world's largest broadband market in terms of absolute numbers, it lags the United States and Europe in overall penetration, with just 3.6 out of every 100 inhabitants connected to the high-speed Internet, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said in a report.

The ITU, which groups companies and official bodies from 191 countries, held an industry conference in Bangkok this week.

The Asia Pacific region has about 1.4 billion mobile phone subscribers, representing 42 percent of the global market, and it is expected to exceed 50 percent within the next two years, Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the ITU, said.

India and China combined have total cellphone subscribers of about 900 million, accounting for a quarter of the world total.

"Every month, India adds 9 million new subscribers and more, which is higher than China. We hope the excitement will continue," said N.K. Goyal, president of consultant group Communications and Manufacturing Association of India.

But if India is the world's fastest-growing mobile phone market with nearly 300 million subscribers, only 11 million people in the country have access to the Internet.

While developed markets like South Korea and Singapore are among the world's top 10 economies for household broadband access, most of the low- and lower-middle-income economies in the Asia Pacific region have limited and costly access to Internet.