Wireless Data Spending in Canada Expected to Double by 2019: IDC

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Following the annual CRTC report, it was the turn of IDC to analyse the performance of the Canadian wireless market last year and predict how it will perform over the next few years. According to IDC, the Canadian telecom market grew by 3.9% in 2014, with wireless accounting for $20.1 billion, or 45% of telecom services spending.

The market research firm says subscriber penetration remained at 80%, unchanged from a year earlier, but expects it to grow to 31 million subscribers (representing 82% of the Canadian population) by 2019.

“Despite slower subscriber growth, increasing wireless substitution strengthens the primacy of wireless as the preferred method of communications and boosting wireless revenue as a proportion of total telecom revenue in Canada,” says Lawrence Surtees, report author and vice president of Communications Research at IDC Canada. “Business use cases for gigabit wireless has also greatly increased, making next-generation 5G wireless networks a compelling must-have, which will exponentially drive use of and spending on wireless data beginning at the end of the current forecast period.”

This year, wireless spending should account for almost half (49%) of overall telecom spending, representing 3.8% growth, or $24.3 billion, by 2019. As for this year, IDC predicts that wireless players should report a combined revenue of $21.3 billion.

You may recall Ericsson’s forecast that wireless data usage would reach 22 GB per month per active smartphone. Well, that means wireless data spending will also grow, as IDC foresees: The market research firm expects spending to more than double as a whole over the next five years, pushing wireless data revenue to $14.4 billion in 2019, which compares to $9.3 billion reported in 2014.

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