But growth is unevenly distributed and few countries could grow ARPU
Tefficient’s 29th public analysis of the development and drivers of mobile data compares 44 countries from all regions of the world.
Although a pandemic hit the world in 1H 2020, usage grew in every single country. But the growth was unevenly distributed – some countries grew faster than before while others grew slower than before.
And as a likely consequence of the pandemic, few countries were capable of turning usage growth into ARPU growth? Read on.
Finland, Taiwan, Bahrain and Latvia lead the world in average data usage per subscription. But it is Croatia that leads the world in usage growth; 128% between the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2020. The Netherlands, Australia and Norway had the slowest growth.
Data-only continues to define the average mobile data usage although the share of base is limited. In all but four reported markets, data-only’s share of total traffic grew – a trend that started in 2019, before Corona. We attribute this to FWA.
Using mobile data has never been cheaper but the erosion in the revenue per gigabyte varies a lot between markets. Croatia had the fastest erosion, 58%, and India (!) the slowest, 13%.
Download analysis: The growth in mobile data wasn’t stopped by a pandemic – updated 27 December with 1H 2020 stats for Denmark, Romania, Iceland and Greece and 2019 stats for Canada