Latest mobile market forecasts

Portio Research just released their latest mobile market forecasts. Here is a quick summary. There are some interesting conclusions. For example, Russia will plateau during 2006-2011 and there's still a lot of steam left in the good ol' US of A:

Worldwide mobile subs end 2005: 2.129 billion
Forecast for 2011: 3.964 billion

Net adds by region by 2011:

• Asia Pac: 1 billion
• Africa: 265 million
• Latin America: 205 million
• Middle East: 79 million (largely Iran/Iraq)
  
• Central, eastern, southern Europe: 79 million
• North America: 75 million
• Northern Europe: 30 million

Asia Pac will account for 50% of total subs by 2011.

Rankings by country:

• 1 and 2: India and China will have just over a billion subs combined.
• 3, 4 and 5: Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria (73 million net adds EACH)
• 6: USA (66 million net adds)
• 7-10: Pakistan, Mexico, Bangladesh and Iran (182 million net adds between them)
• Others: Russia (28 million net adds), Japan (14 million net adds)
  

Surprisingly, Argentina, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Canada fall lower in the rankings.

Keep in mind that lower subs growth in developing markets doesn't mean the network operators won't be investing in their networks. In fact they will probably be playing catch up for a long while after the onslaught of next couple of years.