Asia's number of mobile-phone subscribers will increase 16 per cent to 727.4 million this year as demand rises in India, researcher IDC said.
Revenue from mobile services in Asia, excluding Japan, will expand 10 per cent to $89.9 billion in 2006 from $81.4 billion a year earlier, Alayne Wong, a Singapore-based research manager at IDC, said on Wednesday.
India is leading Asia's mobile subscriber growth as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communication Ventures expand into smaller towns and offer free incoming calls. Around 7 per cent of people in India own mobile phones, lagging behind the 23 per cent rate in Asia, according to Massachusetts-based IDC.
The number of mobile subscribers in India is forecast to rise more than three times to 256.1 million in 2010 from 75.9 million in 2005. The number of users in China probably increase 51 per cent to 568.1 million from 376.