November 01, 2007	Thursday	Shawwal 19, 1428

RAWALPINDI: The region of South Asia, home to 23 per cent of the world’s population, has become the world leader in mobile telephony; however the region still behind in terms of internet users, and contains fewer than one per cent of its internet users, says a new study prepared by the UN regional commission for Asia and the Pacific.

Building on the current advantages and specificities, the Asian and Pacific region is poised to become a world leader and creator of next-generation technology and development for mobile phones and the Internet, says a report prepared for the meeting on managing globalisation, scheduled to take place in Bangkok in mid-November.

However, the report points out that the benefits of the emerging knowledge economy are gravitating to the rich and educated, and unless special efforts are made to increase the competitive edge of poor, that trend can only worsen.

On the basis that a knowledge-based economy presents opportunities for society and the economy as a whole, it is clear that a portion of the estimated economic growth in development of the countries in the Asian and Pacific region in the next few years will have to be attributed to new and better knowledge.

In the area of mobile technology, the Asian and Pacific region counted 1.2 billion mobile telephone subscribers at the end of 2006, which accounts for 43 per cent of the 2.7 billion mobile phone users worldwide. At the end of September 2007, Pakistan has 70,008,462 mobile phone users, according to statistics prepared by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Over all, the cellular mobile density in 2007 is 39.94 as compared to 22.21 in 2006, which shows a steady rise in the density rate.

In Pakistan, six mobile companies were operating, while the Special Communications Organisation (SCO) operating mainly in AJK and Northern Areas, have 104,014 mobile subscribers at the end of June 2007.

India had 200 million subscribers in 2007 and is forecast to have 300 million by 2010. China had 500 million subscribers in 2007, which represented only 30 per cent of mobile penetration in the country. Moreover, their geographical particularities make Asian and Pacific countries demanding users for new wireless technology such as 3G and WiMAX, and leading adopters of such technologies. Mobile phone users in Japan and the Republic of Korea are also early adopters of advanced technology, and China and India help to shape the regional mobile phone market.

In the area of internet, Pakistan has 12,000,000 internet users as of December 2006, which represents 7.2 per cent of the population having access to internet. In 2000, this percentage was 0.1 per cent, according to PTA data. The population density comes at 187 persons per square kilometers.

However, Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (ISPAK) estimates internet users in the country between 3 to 5 million. There are approximately 60 operational internet service providers in the country.

One trend is the convergence of mobile and fixed phones, the telecommunication and broadcasting world and mobile and financial services: the mobile phone becomes the ubiquitous device, not only for phone calls and text messaging, but also for watching and consuming multimedia products (music, video, games), and acting as electronic money and the enabler of m-commerce and m-transactions.

The Asian and Pacific region also occupies an important place in software production, mostly in ICT services but also in localised software productions, such as video games: in China only, revenue from the online gaming industry reached around $1 billion at the end of 2006, with earnings reaching around $4.3 billion. Software developed by China holds a 65 per cent market share on the mainland, with an additional $20 million in revenue generated by users outside China, the rest of the market being held by companies in the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

China has included online gaming in its 2006-2010 plans for software. Japan has two world leaders in video game hardware and is the second largest market for video games after the United States. In 2006, the total revenue of hardware and software related to video games was $5 billion in the local Japanese market and $10 billion in exports, totalling $14 billion.

Countries in Asia and the Pacific are also leaders in content consumption and production: for example, the film industry in India, Bollywood, produces on average more than 1,000 films a year while that of the United States, Hollywood, produces around 500. With the worldwide audience for Bollywood films being around 3 billion, in terms of audience, Bollywood overtook Hollywood in 2004 and has been leading since then.

Another area to which the Asian and Pacific region needs to pay attention is the increasing importance of space technologies for the development of a knowledge economy. Space applications are a fundamental part of the knowledge economy, not only in their role of supporting infrastructure for economic, social, technological and environmental activities but also as a generator of leading- edge technologies and an increasingly important market. The satellite industry and services market for the next decade will surpass $150 billion, with a two-digit increase rate.