Mobile social networking has also proven to be a big driver of smartphone adoption in all Asian countries.
"Smartphones are critical to every operator's mobile broadband business case, as a smartphone user's ARPU (average revenue per user) typically increased by 25 to 100 percent after adoption depending on the market," says Frost & Sullivan industry manager Marc Einstein.
"The Asia-Pacific market is particularly interesting for smartphones as there has been significant uptake in emerging markets like China, India and Indonesia, even among prepaid users," he adds.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, 2010 Asia-Pacific Mobile Device & Smartphone Outlook, finds that the incremental data usage from smartphones will generate over US$38 billion for operators in the Asia-Pacific region (18 Asia-Pac countries, including Japan), up from just over US$1.3 billion in 2009.
Despite the massive growth in smartphone sales, there are still many factors impeding sale of the device in many markets. According to Einstein, "Eighty percent of Asian mobile users use prepaid cards, and in fact in many markets are as high as 97 percent, making smartphone subsidies impossible for most users. Furthermore, there is a lack of public Wi-Fi, particularly in emerging markets which has been a smartphone saviour in the USA and other developed markets."
Smartphone sales are also particularly important for vendors as the total market for device sales is stagnant in most markets.
"Only the most developing markets are seeing double-digit increases in device sales, and with flat or negative growth in many markets, smartphone sales are filling in this gap," Einstein adds.
He estimates 477 million units of smartphones will be sold in Asia-Pacific in 2015.
