Mobile applications offer new and huge opportunities for customer – company communications.
Vertiginous increase in mobile phone coverage has coupled with increased sales of smartphones, which enable the use of 3G or 4G applications. Companies may benefit from this applications to communicate better and cheaper with their customers.
Elfinancierocr.com remarks that “the use of smartphones and applications is moving from being a business opportunity an obligation for companies, as it was having Internet presence 10 years ago or being in Facebook today”.
Representatives from the Tax Authority and telecomm supervision acknowledged the lack of controls for the mobile market.
They added they rely on reports sent by telephony companies to conduct tax collection.
"Ricardo Flores, telephony manager at the Telecommunications Authority (SIT), commented they depend on reports sent every six months by the companies, and they have no capacity to evaluate call volume.
Costa Rica's mobile telephony market won't be open to competition until 2011.
In the past 10 years, Costa Rica has been losing what was a privileged position in telecommunications. Statistics from the International Telecommunications Union show that the country, with 1.800.000 mobile phone subscribers, is ranked 160th in the list of 225 countries.
With 42 mobile phone lines per 100 inhabitants, Costa Rica is way below its Central American neighbors. Panama has 115, El Salvador 113, Guatemala 109, Honduras 85, Nicaragua 55. In the American continent, only Cuba and Haiti fare worse.
Tigo users will enjoy a customized version of Opera Mini mobile browser.
This version of Opera Mini for Tigo features menus in Spanish and more intuitive navigation.
"With Opera Mini for Tigo Guatemala, users will enjoy easier and faster mobile web browsing, because Opera Mini compresses the information transmitted via Internet", reported Prensalibre.com.
Despite the crisis, mobile phone lines continued growing in Guatemala, reaching 16 million after the first half of 2009.
Growth is expected to continue in the second semester, even surpassing the first half, as it is common for mobile phone lines to enjoy greater demand in the second halves of each year.
Claro and Tigo own the largest share of the market, with 37% each, followed by Telefónica with 25% according to data from the Telecommunications Superintendence.
The telecommunications market in Guatemala will grow at a compound rate of 5% over the next 5 years, reaching $2.800 million in 2014.
Revenues for this market were $1.9 billion in 2009, out of which 62% was generated by the mobile segment, according to a recent study by Pyramid Research. This segment would grow at a 13.7% annual rate over the next 5 years and "though messaging will remain the main source of revenue, connectivity will gain more than 10 percentage points of total revenue fueled by mobile Internet and mobile broadband", states a press release in Reuters.com.
Tigo controls 48% of the cellular market, with over 4.9 million subscribers.
The remainder of the market is distributed between Claro and Telefónica, according to data from the International Telecommunications Union.
"... the number of cell phones in Guatemala has doubled during the past 5 years. In 2003 there were 49 phones for each 100 inhabitants. This figure was 109 in 2008", reported Elperiodico.com.gt.
The price of the device will vary depending on the services being acquired, informed Litza Escobar, from Claro.
Prices go from $199 for the 16GB version, to $299 for the 32GB one, according to information published on the Internet.
"The touch screen telephone competes with RIM's Blackberry, which is more orientated to businesses, and with the new Palm Pre, which has registered a solid demand since its market entry", published Prensalibre.com.
Panama imported $190 million worth of mobile phones in 2008, at a time when Claro was not operating in the country and Digicel was just starting.
This industry is growing at rapid pace, fueled by the fast advances in technology, as new features are being added almost constantly: longer lasting batteries, internet navigation, video calls, GPS, etc.
Panama's mobile phone penetration stands at 115%, meaning that each Panamanian uses more than one device on average.
Service Provider, focus on Central America Telecommunications market. Mobile Network Roll-Out from Site adquisition a Civil Works to Network Integración and Optimization. Project Management consultant
Organization that operates in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama
Phone: (502) 2386 1010 - (502) 5200 9100
At the close of 2008, there were 14 million 948 thousand cell phone users, according to a report by the Superintendent of Telecommunications (SIT).
SIT also reported a slight growth of 2.52% in fixed telephone service.
Urías Gamarro wrote about the SIT report in Prensalibre.com: "As of December 31, 2008, Claro reported 5.906 million users, equaling 39.50% of the market; the Tigo Company reported 34.60% and Movistar 25.90%."