Published on the 14/04/2011 | Written by Newsdesk

Tablets and social networking services are key revenue growth opportunities for operators in Asia-Pacific according to mobile broadband industry survey…

Ovum’s latest Mobile Broadband Industry Survey, conducted jointly with Telecom Asia, reports that almost 50% of respondents think that handsets will be the major driver of mobile broadband traffic in the future.

In last year’s survey, the netbooks/laptops category was expected to be the primary driver of mobile broadband growth, however, in this year’s review, that category fell to third place.

“Operators view tablets as a more natural fit than laptops or netbooks as they have the same life cycle, operating system and data model as smartphones,” said Nicole McCormick, Senior Analyst at Ovum.

The threat from over-the-top (OTT) players such as Google and Apple was considered to be a “very significant” or “moderate” threat by over 80% respondents. Approximately 25% believed that OTT players pose a “very significant” threat to mobile operators.

Partnering with content providers was deemed the best way to counter the threat from OTT players by 69% of respondents, with coverage and quality of service (QoS) also considered as important.

“Common sense has prevailed,” said McCormick.

“Rather than take on the OTT players head-on, it makes more sense for operators to partner with them across as many areas of the ecosystem as they possibly can.”

According to respondents, social networking (31%), video (30%), and browsing (17%) will be the applications that drive the majority of traffic growth in 2011. Social networking was included in the survey for the first time this year, and was marginally ahead of mobile video as the leading driver of traffic growth application. Last year, 36% of respondents expected browsing to be the primary driver of traffic growth, which was down from 42% in the 2008–09 survey.

Ovum’s latest Mobile Broadband Industry Survey, conducted jointly with Telecom Asia, reports that almost 50% of respondents think that handsets will be the major driver of mobile broadband traffic in the future.

In last year’s survey, the netbooks/laptops category was expected to be the primary driver of mobile broadband growth, however, in this year’s review, that category fell to third place.

“Operators view tablets as a more natural fit than laptops or netbooks as they have the same life cycle, operating system and data model as smartphones,” said Nicole McCormick, Senior Analyst at Ovum.

The threat from over-the-top (OTT) players such as Google and Apple was considered to be a “very significant” or “moderate” threat by over 80% respondents. Approximately 25% believed that OTT players pose a “very significant” threat to mobile operators.

Partnering with content providers was deemed the best way to counter the threat from OTT players by 69% of respondents, with coverage and quality of service (QoS) also considered as important.

“Common sense has prevailed,” said McCormick.

“Rather than take on the OTT players head-on, it makes more sense for operators to partner with them across as many areas of the ecosystem as they possibly can.”

According to respondents, social networking (31%), video (30%), and browsing (17%) will be the applications that drive the majority of traffic growth in 2011. Social networking was included in the survey for the first time this year, and was marginally ahead of mobile video as the leading driver of traffic growth application. Last year, 36% of respondents expected browsing to be the primary driver of traffic growth, which was down from 42% in the 2008–09 survey.