MALAYSIA'S MOBILE BROADBAND MARKET TO BE WORTH US$2.9 BLN BY 2015

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 10 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's mobile broadband market will
balloon to RM9 billion (US$2.9 billion) by 2015 from RM6 billion (US$1.93
billion) last year, says Nitin Bhat, Frost & Sullivan ICT Practice Asia-Pacific
partner and senior vice-president.

"Increasing use of smartphones, driven by rapid price decline and
application richness, has boosted demand for mobile broadband," he said.

Nitin said Smartphones access to the Internet via 3G connection allowed
users to be connected on the go without the need for dongles.

As the mobile subscribers market was heading towards saturation, market
players were looking at mobile broadband as a growth driver, he said.

Among others, he said, wireless broadband has been fast gaining popularity
over fixed broadband with almost two million wireless broadband subscribers
compared with 1.65 million fixed broadband subscribers last year.

In 2009, fixed broadband dominated over wireless broadband with 1.4 million
subscribers to 0.9 million subscribers, he told a media briefing Thursday.

Nitin said fixed broadband would gain market share this year and next year
due to introduction of the high-speed broadband and wholesale deals by Maxis and
Celcom.

"Government support for high speed broadband will also help drive the fixed
broadband market. The Malaysian fixed broadband market is expected to reach 2.2
million subscribers in 2015," he said.

With the Internet user base to reach 23.25 million by 2015, it is expected
that 70 per cent of them would have access to personal internet connection,
Nitin said.

The smartphone strategy will be the big bet of all mobile operators going
forward especially when almost 13 million broadband users are expected to access
the Internet via smartphones by 2015.

As for the enterprise service market, Nitin said its revenue is expected to
reach RM5.8 billion in 2015 as compared with RM2.7 billion last year.

"The Malaysian data centre services market is set to grow at 16 per cent
compound annual growth rate (CAGR), with cloud computing to be an important
growth driver as Malaysian enterprises demonstrate increasing interest in cloud
services," he added.
-- BERNAMA