Want to increase your mobile growth? Try giving some more power to the people

In today's paper, Tom Gara reported that Etisalat, the UAE's largest telecommunications company, reported its quarterly profits are up 4 per cent compared to the same period last year. The company also said it has added 41,000 new mobile subscribers in the quarter, less than one-fifth of its new subscribers in the year-earlier period.

While no company can shake off the effects from the global recession, the subscriber numbers beg the question - have we begun to see real mobile saturation in the country? It may be too soon to tell, but a report released today by US-based telecoms consultancy, ABI Research, may shed some light on how companies like Etisalat can avoid slowing growth.

The global mobile subscriber base is expected to grow from 4.3 billion users this year to nearly 5.4 billion by 2013. While the industry's distribution models and network infrastructure builds remains in a constant state of flux, the growth is said to come directly from giving subscribers a more personalised experience.

"Although the mobile consumer can be defined by mobile voice subscriptions and spending on messaging, web access and other mobile data services, those measurements are simplistic. Mobile consumers are increasingly defined by the applications they acquire to personalize their mobile experience, by their adoption of mobile broadband, their shopping choices, and how, when and where they use their mobile services," ABI Research senior analyst said in a statement.

So Etisalat and du, want to buck the trend your peers around the world are experiencing during these tough economic times? Giving your customers more pricing and service control may be the right way of doing it.

Photo credit: Cell phone towers, one disguised as a palm tree. Galen Clarke / The National