The Australian mobile market has been traditionally characterised as a mature market with steady growth driven by population growth and mobile broadband. However, this market is about to see strong innovation (5G) and disruption (TPG-Vodafone merger) in the next few years

We forecast the mobile market will remain the largest segment in the overall telco market with A$22.3bn in revenue by 2022

With the merger between TPG and Vodafone to form a third full service telco in the market, we expect the competitive intensity to increase with incumbents facing pricing and margin pressure from 2018-19 onwards

However, despite TPG’s aggressive initial pricing and service offering, at this stage we have been conservative in our estimates with respect to TPG-Vodafone’s impact on incumbent market shares as we expect a gradual subscriber take-up of the network over 2018-2022

The arrival of 5G and emergence of wireless access to the Internet as an alternative to fixed broadband means that the mobile market will continue to experience strong growth, with ARPUs steadying

Venture Insights believes that 5G coupled with IoT will enable the transition from a connectivity based revenue model to a services based revenue model for mobile operators