Asia Pacific Watch

January 29, 2004
APac billing solutions market to hit US $1.7 billion by 2007: IDC

SINGAPORE -- IDC recently announced that the billing solution market in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) closed at an estimated US$1.48 billion for 2003. By 2007, it is likely to achieve an estimated US$1.7 billion. This represents a CAGR of 4.3 percent for the period 2003-2007, which is higher than the global CAGR of 2 percent. According to a recent IDC report, "Asia/Pacific Telecom Billing Solutions Forecast, 2003-2007," as the Asia Pacific region continues to develop in respect to its communications infrastructure and industries, the market for global billing solutions is set to increase in importance.

However, unlike the western markets where the differentiation between markets is less marked compared to the markets in the Asia Pacific, global billing solutions vendors here have had to apply a country-by-country approach and this has undermined their ability to expand their direct presence across these markets.

Wilvin Chee, associate director, Asia Pacific Software, said: "The telecommunications billing software market in Asia Pacific is a relatively complex one where vendors are faced with numerous different cultures, speed to market, sets of regulations, and a multitude of other variables. As such, these vendors face a challenging time, despite the obvious plentiful opportunities. Although the uptake of mobile handsets and Internet access services, especially in huge markets like China and India, appear consistently encouraging, we regard the telecommunications boom in this region to have slowed down."

There is still room for the outsourcing element of the billing solutions market to develop. Many large service bureau vendors concentrated in the North American region have yet to fully expand their offerings throughout the Asia Pacific region. The larger global service bureau vendors that presently offer services within the Asia Pacific region have only managed to reap a small percentage of revenue. Political issues (e.g., labour laws), are preventing operators from eliminating their internal operational support and billing workforce and move on to an outsourced model. The desire of government agencies to own, control and monitor customer data and related billing functions is another major reason.

Although the systems integration (SI) market for billing solutions is well established in the Asia Pacific region, many billing vendors lack the capital to penetrate every market effectively. They also lack the experience in managing integration complexity within the infrastructure of the existing disparate systems that are best served by the traditionally experienced system integrators such as Accenture, Amdocs, IBM, CGE&Y and SchlumbergerSema.

Singapore's billing software solutions market is considered fairly mature and advanced. Although investments by service providers have waned recently due to the stagnated economy, broadband and mobile services continue to grow steadily and bring opportunities for billing solution vendors.

Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) billing solutions forecast, 2003-2007 (in US $million)

Source: IDC, 2003

Contact:
IDC Asia Pacific
Tel: +65-6228-7769
www.idc.com.sg