Forecasts for Brazil: its going to be hot

It’s no coincidence that the Mobile Marketing Association chose Brazil for its Latin American Forum this week. With 152 million mobile subscribers at the last count by Anatel (the country’s regulator), it’s a mobile market that’s tipped to be as hot as Brazil’s legendary summers.

Brazil is also the perfect place to kick off mobiThinking’s brand new season of country reports. Read:
The insider’s guide to mobile marketing in Brazil

Mobile advertising revenue is forecasted to balloon in Brazil from US$2.4 million in 2008 to US$395 million in 2013, according to this report from Pyramid Research. That will take mobile from 1 percent of total digital advertising revenues to 25 percent in five years.

“Brazil definitely has the highest potential for mobile advertising in Latin America, simply because of the size of the total mobile market itself. The same goes for Mexico following behind,” Ten Sythoff, manager of mobile content, Pyramid Research, told mobiThinking.

Another report, this time from Juniper Research appears to concur.

Of the four hot developing mobile markets, Brazil, Russia, India and China (known affectionately as BRIC), “It is Brazil that offers the best potential for mobile data/Internet usage. Thus, it would stand to reason that there will be higher acceptance of or consumption of value-added services, such as advertising/marketing,” said Andrew Kitson, senior analyst, Juniper Research.

Currently Brazil’s mobile penetration is 73-75 percent of the population. While the penetration of 3G networks (capable of the mobile download speeds seen in the West) is still limited today, Kitson expects 15 percent of mobile subscribers to be on 3G by 2013.

3G take up in Russia, and possibly China, may be faster than in Brazil, but recession appears to be biting both the Russian and Chinese mobile markets harder than Brazil, thus far. So Kitson predicts that in Brazilian subscribers will continue to increase their spend on mobile services.

Of the four BRIC countries, India brings up the rear in both 3G roll out and subscriber expenditure.

A third report, this time by Frost & Sullivan, predicts that mobile banking will be key to mobile Internet growth in Latin America led by Brazil, and Argentina and Chile.

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