This blog is about a week out of date. During that time, $295k was made by the mobile industry. It’s an impressive number, and no, I’m not talking about mobile advertising but about the amount that is made from mobile subscribers by the carriers. (For those of you interested, these figures are in a presentation available here).

Most of the carriers put out their six monthly updates last week and this included the following:
VHA: growth of 584k to 6.895m subscribers (average monthly ARPU at $56)
Optus: growth of 591k to 8.224 subscribers. Note that Optus also wiped 272k of old pre-paid subscribers off their books, so they are reporting lowing in comparison with other periods. Their ARPU is stated to be $48 per month
Telstra: added 681k subscribers to remain the biggest at 10.387m with a respectable ARPU of $50.55 – well up from years ago when it was less than half of that enjoyed by H3GA (as it was then).

Putting all this together, you get growth of 1.856m subscribers in this reporting period, or 7.8% growth annualised. It brings the number of mobile subscribers in Australia to 25.506m while the population stands at 21.374. Basically, a mobile penetration rate amongst the world highest at 119%.

A few more figures also this time on wireless broadband: While the numbers haven’t been reported for as long or as consistently, our love affair with being unwired is continuing strongly. VHA reported a 134% jump in subscriber to 673k; Optus (growth not reported) has 799k subscriber and Telstra reported growth of 73% to take them to 1.325m – or 2.797m wireless broadband subscribers.

The figures are impressive, but it is the change over time that I find most interesting. Two years ago, we had ARPU numbers around $17 or up to $30 and in some case, sub $10 per month. Now we’re at $50 per month on average. This shows that our appetite for mobile services is continuing to grow, it is likely that much of this is being fuelled by smart phones that allow us to use our mobile as much more than a phone – but we’re clearly taking advantage of this. Bear in mind, these numbers don’t necessarily include mobile advertising or application purchases via any apps stores.

We’ve heard the comment ‘this will be the year of mobile’ so often, let’s stop saying it. Mobile is here, mobile is mainstream. Mobile is generating more than $1.2b per year for carriers. It’s time to take it seriously serious.