PETALING JAYA, Dec 14 — Unabated growth in mobile applications and heavy usage in data traffic will present strong revenue opportunities for mobile operators, says Head of Ericsson Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Todd Ashton.

“Smartphone subscriptions in Malaysia is expected to grow by over 100 per cent in 2018 with the amount of data used monthly by each active smartphone increasing substantially.

“This will create opportunities for domestic operators over the years,” he said at the media briefing in conjunction with the release of the fifth Ericsson Mobility Report here today.

According to the report, ties between telecommunications providers and online shopping platforms under the sponsored data traffic segment had resulted in higher mobile data traffic.

It said this has also led to the 23 per cent increase in revenue of ‘other services’ on a year-on-year basis for the period 2013-2014.

As for the possibility of foreign telco providers to enter the Malaysian market, Ashton said, it was difficult for them as telco industry was a capital-intensive business.

“It’s hard for a new entrant because it requires an enormous investment,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ericsson Regional, Head of ConsumerLab, Afrizal Abdul Rahim, said local banks should subsidised the cost of data in order to grow mobile banking segment volume.

This would allow users to access Internet banking portal without data charges.

“About 70 per cent of Malaysians are connected to Internet. However, about 30 per cent are still not connected to the Internet because they are in rural areas,” he said. — Bernama