I’m often comforted to see consensus on forecast—particularly when ours is first.   Competitor F&S has a press release out on its views of the Asia Pacific broadband market; and I will be the first to shamelessly point out that ours was released two months prior, in June.

Interestingly, the two estimates are quite similar—and in some metrics nearly identical--something that doesn’t happen all that often. 

Two things that make Asia Pacific a fascinating, albeit challenging, market to forecast accurately:

It’s Big—Really Big

The APAC region accounts for nearly 40% of the world’s broadband connections, and includes the top two  most populous individual countries in the world.  Plus, the population is growing.

Immense Disparity Among Countries

As I’ve pointed out in the past, Asia is tale of two regions. On one hand, highly developed markets, such as South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong, lead the world in broadband penetration and fiber deployment. Meanwhile, three of the world`s most populous countries, (China, India, and Indonesia), representing 40% of global population, have household broadband penetration rates below 21%