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Link: UAE: Mobile penetration will slow next year

Increase in the number of mobile phone subscribers in the UAE will slow to 10.2 per cent next year compared to the blazing growth of 29.5 per cent achieved in 2007, analysts said. This will be accomplished on the back of continuing population growth, investment bank EFG-Hermes said in the UAE Research Yearbook 2008 released last week. “With mobile and fixed-line penetration rates of 151 and 30 per cent, respectively, both the highest in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), we believe that population will be the main driver of telecommunications growth. We forecast the UAE’s population will grow at a 2007-2012 CAGR [compounded annual growth rate] of 7.3 per cent,” the bank’s analysts wrote in a report in the 2008 yearbook. The mobile penetration rate will continue to exceed the size of the addressable market over the next two years, then decline to a level equal to it. “We project that mobile phone subscriber additions will begin to slow, with the expanding population driving most of the growth. For 2008, we expect subscribers to grow by 10.2 per cent, up from the 6.7 per cent we had previously forecast. This is less than the 29.5 per cent growth that we expect for 2007.”