Hong Kong’s highly saturated mobile service market will register further growth in the mobile subscription penetration from 238% in 2020 to 268% in 2025, driven by the continued rise in mobile Internet subscriptions and rising adoption of machine-to-machine/Internet of Things (M2M/IoT) services, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s Hong Kong Mobile Broadband Forecast Model highlights that M2M/IoT subscriptions will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.0% between 2020 and 2025, with operators beginning to provide innovative industry specific-M2M/IoT solutions.

For instance, in March 2020 during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, HKBN introduced a Smart IoT Thermal Detection Solution for retailers and other businesses to help detect abnormal body temperature of individuals before they enter offices, retail outlets and restaurants, support smart alerts and record uploads via 4G mobile network.

Deepa Dhingra, Telecom Analyst at GlobalData, says: “The overall mobile service revenues will grow at a 3.5% CAGR during 2020-2025, driven by growth in mobile data service revenues, which will offset the decline from mobile voice and messaging service revenues during the forecast period. Mobile data service revenues will grow at a 6.6% CAGR over 2020-2025, in line with the continued rise in mobile Internet subscriptions and growing adoption of 5G services that yield higher average revenue per user (ARPU).”

5G will be the leading mobile service technology in Hong Kong in 2024, primarily driven by the efforts of the government and the regulator to boost 5G infrastructure deployment as well as ongoing investments by operators in 5G network expansion.

Ms Dhingra concludes: “The government has been providing subsidies for up to 50% of the direct costs for 5G deployment projects, with a cap of HKD500,000 to operators to accelerate 5G network deployment.

“The growing availability of low-latency and high-speed 5G services will also boost the consumption of high-bandwidth online content such as video and social media services on mobile networks. GlobalData estimates video traffic to increase more than threefold between 2020 and 2025.”