China had 687.2 million subscribers in 2008 (about 80% of North Asia's mobile users). By 2014, this will increase to 1.15 billion users.

T&A: Frost & Sullivan released a report, indicating that compared to the other Asian sub-regions, North Asia (China, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong), continues to lead in mobile revenues, innovation and subscription in 2009.

According to the report, Japan is expected to launch its LTE (Long Term Evolution) in 2010 — which is probably a world first — and together with South Korea, form the two nations with the highest ARPU (average revenue per user) levels in Asia-Pacific.

Japan leads with an ARPU of US$53.2 per month in 2008, while South Korea takes second with US$38.04.

By the end of 2009, North Asia is expected to have 1 billion mobile users, which is a year-on-year growth of 15.3%.

While China continues to fuel this growth (51.6% mobile penetration rate in 2008), other countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are experiencing similar take-up rates at 133.2%, 110.9%, 94% and 86.5% respectively.

China alone is expected to form 80% of that billion user benchmark.In the four countries besides China, Frost & Sullivan believes that growth will be driven less by more subscribers but more by data usage due to mobile broadband and 3G service uptake.

“We expect intense price competition in these markets with the vast majority of mobile data subscribers using flat-rate plans,” one analyst explains. (Editor opinions: 1)

HWM Indonesia

HWM Indonesia: No surprises there as the North Asian countries are more economically established than the rest of Asia.

Telecommunication infrastructure is also more developed making it more practical to use, thus more usage per user.

The rest of Asia is still catching up on the number of mobile phone owners.

The development and introduction of additional mobile features (content) are still slow with most providers still focusing on basic mobile phone usage (voice and texting).