Quarterly Wireless ARPU Down Worldwide
Despite the fact that it's a flawed metric, average revenue per user remains the most widely used financial metric in the mobile industry. A new survey out says ARPUs dropped around the world in the third quarter, led by significant drops in Eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific. It's no surprise to see ARPUs shrink as prices fall, but the figures don't give any idea about the profitability of carriers -- as we've said before, ARPU totally ignores margins and profits in favor of revenues. One other interesting takeaway from the study is that ARPU in the US and Canada, where wireless service is "cheap", is a third higher than in Europe, where it's pretty much across the board more expensive. Elasticity strikes again?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
