UK leads the way on mobile data

Mobile's holy grail, ARPU or average revenue per user, is starting to level off in the mobile world, a new report says, and operators have data services in their sights to make up the shortfall.

A report from mobile business and entertainment company Netsize claims that voice revenues are the first casualties in the price war to keep customers and that data revenues, boosted by the introduction of higher speed networks have seen growth of between 10 and 20 per cent a year.

Mobile browsing is the fastest growing data service, according to the report, although SMS still leads the way in revenues, with 750 billion messages sent in 2004, of which 26 billion were sent in the UK.

The report also highlights that the UK is one of only a few European countries where mobile penetration has reached 100 per cent, due to users owning both a business and work phone, for example.

The UK also has over 50 per cent of handsets internet-enabled - one of the "most developed data markets in Europe", the report says.